He lay on the large back seat of the car with his head propped up on the door’s armrest. The center rest was folded up into the seat behind him. She was stretched across the floorboards, asleep. Their parents often wondered aloud how they could lay over the hump in the middle of the floor without being in pain for the remainder of the trip. They apparently didn’t understand that the minor discomfort of a sore back was nothing compared to the irritation of constant physical contact with your sibling.
He read his comic and paid no attention the hard hat and umbrella sliding across the back of the seat, in the large window, or the smell of the cigarette smoke or the odor of drilling fluid and chemical products their father carried in a product kit in the trunk. Occasionally, his father would let his arm slide off the back of the front seat to squeeze his knee or gently scratch his mother’s back as she slept in the passenger seat. After finishing the book, he glanced up and out of the window and watched the passing clouds or odd billboard that zoomed past. The reality of starting in a new school began to creep in and he wished he had another issue to start.
As the years progressed, he discovered that his run-ins with a bully or pest was not the result of not being able to match the heroism of his favorite characters. Rather, he realized that his total immersion in the fantasy world hindered his capability, or desire, to interact with kids his age.
