It's that magical time of the week again. You've been waiting around for what feels like an eternity with bated breath.* Here's a Tic Tac. And also the latest update of "Saturday" the book.
This week, the panels come from page 30. This page wasn't finished yet when I was posting updates the first time around, which means we're into uncharted territory here. The uncharted territory in question is a stroll through Sunday evening, wherein the McGreevy family is enjoying the weekend's last gleaming:
It just so happens to be Memorial Day weekend here in the states. It's sort of seen as the first official weekend of the Summer and, according to AAA, everyone is going to be going on a road trip. Of course, by the time you actually read this, you'll have already tripped the roads fantastic. You'll be pulling your groaning, steaming chariot back into the driveway. The windows will be rolled down because your 24-hour deodorant apparently went on strike one hour into its shift. You'll be exhausted and sunburned, with what you hope is a chocolate ice cream stain on your shirt and sand in your shoes. If you decided to go to Amity this year, you may or may not have one less child than you did at the start. If you did it right, you'll swear an oath to never go on another road trip again.
When I was a kid, Summer road trips meant the stuff of every kid's dreams: South Dakota. We would begrudgingly leave behind a state famous for potatoes and drive to a state who's big tourist draw is Mount Rushmore. "So long, plain oatmeal! For the next week, I'll be eating plain bran!" Oh, the crazy, feverish ecstasy that was South Dakota. What with Mount Rushmore...and The World's Only Corn Palace...and...uh...I'll get back to you on that third tourist attraction.
As soon as they build it.
Of course, we had family there, too. In my mind, this was another check in the "Why are we going, again?" column, but kids are much weaker in terms of resolve and upper body strength than parents, so we always ended up going.
Eventually, we would be forced to leave the Ambien-grade wonder of South Dakota. The trip back would be long, whiny soliloquies punctuated by threats of highway abandonment. They could have just threatened to take us back to South Dakota. That would have been enough to scare us into silence for the entire journey.** We would pull back into the driveway. My parents would unbuckle their seat belts and slump forward momentarily as if the seat belts had been supporting them both physically and spiritually.
And they would swear never to go on another road trip ever again ever.
Ever.
Cheers.
*I looked it up. "Bated" is a shortened version of "abated", which means to reduce or lessen. So you're so excited to read this update that you're short of breath. Is it strange to shorten a word that already means "shorten"? That's like abbreviating the word "abbreviate".
**To the good people of South Dakota: These aspersions are for the sake of humor. I have nothing against your lovely state and its many fine attractions. You gotta admit, though, for a little kid, your state is a wasteland of never ending boredom.
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