Critical Thinking

Yo!

Welcome to the straight dope on "Saturday" the book.

This week's panels come from page 30.  I'm still only working on page 34, which means that in a couple of weeks these updates will have caught up to me.  Again.  And I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do once I don't have any new material to show.  Maybe I'll talk about old "Magnum P.I." episodes or something.  Any suggestions?

Anyway, we'll cross that mustachioed, short shorts-wearing bridge when we get to it.

In the meantime, here's this:

It's just our protagonist, India McGreevy, thinking hard about something

In school, there's a lot of emphasis on developing "critical thinking skills."  At first, they just ask you to read.  Then they ask you to read AND analyze.  And finally, you're asked to read, analyze, and then interpret.  I suppose all those dedicated educators are hoping that one day you'll blossom into a critical thinking wizard.  You'll go out into the world and you'll read things and experience things and be all like, "Imma critical think the crap outta that and get to a deeper understanding of the material and possibly change my worldview and opinions as a result, homie."

And that's all well and good.  But they never tell you how to turn that critical thinky thing off once you're done with it.  Or at least, they never told me.  And not every situation is ideal for critical thinking.  Let's go through some examples:

Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Good
Watching "Transformers": BAD
Watching a Fellini movie: Good
Reading a Clive Cussler book: BAD
Going to the DMV: BAD
Thinking about that spot on your back: BAD
Wondering what your Mom actually meant when she said: BAD


Critical thinking is like a weed eater: A handy for an overgrown lawn, but it's going to ruin your trip to the beach or that romantic dinner at Arby's if you can't turn it off.

The point is that I've thought about "Saturday".  You know...a lot.  I'm hoping this is one of those contexts where thinking about something obsessively for years and years turns out to be an asset.  But the jury's still out.  Actually, there's no way the jury can even return a verdict on this one because they haven't read the book yet.  When they finally do read the book, I just hope they've figured out how to turn off the critical thinky thing and just enjoy what's in front of them.  Otherwise, I'm pretty much screwed.


But I'm probably thinking about it too much.

Cheers.