Chipmunk Bay

Priorities

January 18th, 2010

Have you ever watched a movie and the main characters are, for example, in a high speed car chase. And in the middle of that high speed car chase, they slam into another car or drive another car off the road, and that car drives through a store window causing shoppers to dive for cover and glass is flying everywhere in a fantastic display of Hollywood special effects, and then the main characters continue on their way and the storyline abandons the driver of that other car and the the people who dove out of the way.

I’ve always wondered about those extra people. Surely they have a story to tell afterwards. Maybe the driver was on the way to the hospital where his wife was giving birth, but now he’s going to be late so she has an affair with the doctor immediately after child birth just to spite him. Or maybe the store owner was just telling an employee that the Wal-Mart down the street was trying to put him out of business and kill him to rid themselves of the competition, and the employee was telling him it was a ridiculous theory and then and car slams through the window and kills the owner and ruins the business.

That’s kind of how I feel about this storyline. After I switched gears from the exploding cat to the sub shop gag, you might have thought “Was that it? That’s where that storyline is going to end? Ok, I guess. But there’s still some unresolved stuff.” and then you just accept that the characters took care of that issue ‘off panel’.

And then BAM! I take you back to the story a day later and explain that, no, it was never taken care of. The mess hadn’t been cleaned up, and the cat hadn’t been buried. It turns out that Watterson was left unattended to suffer irreparable psychological damage and Karen flushed a cat down the toilet.

That’s what I’m here for.