Comic #5650: forward
Description
Here’s the transcription of the comic text:
Panel 1:
- Kid: “Mom, why are all adults crazy?! Why can’t they just relax, why can’t they just enjoy anything? Why are they obsessed with what everyone thinks about them?”
Panel 2:
- Mom: “Think of people like cars. You’re fresh off the assembly line, kid.”
Panel 3:
- Mom: “As you cruise along, you get bumps, and scrapes, and even a few serious dings. The more time you spend, the more mottled and off-center the vehicle becomes.”
Panel 4:
- Mom: “Eventually, you have a crash or two or three. Things break you. People break you. But, every time, somehow, as if out of spite, the engine sputters and pushes forward.”
Panel 5:
- Mom: “It pushes forward even as the air has fled the wheels, and the windows are shattered, and the chassis is in pieces, and the skittering shards of rusted-out metal scrape sparks across life’s never-ending asphalt.”
Panel 6:
- Mom: “And then some kid, with his shiny factory-fresh self comes along and asks why exactly you need to watch four hours of celebrity gossip a day just to fit in!”
Panel 7:
- Mom: “Look at me, boy! I am the headlight in the darkness! I have bent a thousand times but never broken! The world has worked this body over until nothing but the primal urge to survive remains, and I still got up, put on my clothes, did my line, made your damned oatmeal, and PUSHED FORWARD!”
Panel 8:
- Mom: “Forward, by God! Forward we lurch into the dim horizon! We all go together where we all go alone!”
Panel 9:
- Kid: “Thank you for the oatmeal, mom.”
- Mom: “You’re welcome, sugarlump.”