And the lights are not fluorescent, and there are no words on the page.

Voice/Rough Draft Essay

During my many travels, I have found sticking a man and his daughter in a hot car for approximately 116 miles, radio on low, murmuring music she likes and he doesn't, homemade food in tupperware in insulated beach bags in piles of slowly unfolding clothes in the back of the trunk, will, against or with their collective will, bring about conclusions. Asinine, podcast-y, "This action will have consequences" conclusions. Some the father's already decided and convinced the daughter of (and vice versa).

You'll get them in a wide variety of (recurring) topics too! The entertainment industry, capitalism, education, and, if you, the reader, happened to be a stowaway on my last return to college, my mother's own gradual and uncharitable concussion:

That she, at the ripe old age of 50-something, is done growing as a person.

It checked out when consulted her track record, like it was fact checking for an intervention: Her slow-roasted resentment in my grandmother's miserly recognition of her overwhelming lifelong achievements (and, subsequently, her brother for slurping up all the motherly attention grandma served up, like the part eched little thing he was), barely abated by her (1) confrontation of my grandmother's behavior. The following mourning period, shared with me and my father for two months at best. Her go-to apology: "I guess I'm a bad person then!" said in the most patronizing voice she could muster (and believe me when I say she has plenty of experience).

My mother is a firecracker more than she is a woman, raw, rich personality stuffed inside what looks like barbie-laminated plastic, engineered at initial creation to shoot off into the sky quicker than the strike of a match. To burn out, quietly, like the star that she is, following the promise of a thunderous boom. A great disappointment you only understand in adulthood.

Of course she saw life, her life, as just sorta...like that. Nothing to be done about it, you could figure she figured. Best to hang that soggy pit of sadness on the coat rack and hope to god it dries in time for work tomorrow.

I wasn't grown up though, despite my age of 20 whole years. At least, not enough to understand how anyone else could think like that. Could find something tucked away in the recess of their life that just wasn't quite right, and go "...Mmmm that should be good enough." The best explanation, the one meant for someone so young and hopeful in their delusions, was found in the very first conclusion I managed to bulldoze my father into coming to that evening: Ever since man first inhaled the emancipating power of creativity and survive the exhale, there has been art born out of someone, somewhere, going "...Well, it looks like the picture in the book", and calling it a night.

You may be surprised to hear this, considering this little article of mine is (arguably) fairly coherent and, at the very least, not actively killing your brain cells, but my favorite television show of all time is one of the laziest, thoughtless, and most exhaustive pieces of media 14 year old me had ever seen in her measly little life. It was a 15 minute serialized animated cartoon named Breadwinners running on Nickelodeon's spinoff channel, Nicktoons, at the time, aired only two seasons, and if you value your time and self respect, you will not watch it. All you need to know about the show is the words of its co-"creator" (the term, of course, used in the most ambiguous sense possible, within the confines of human minds) Gary Di Raffaele on his and Steve Boris shared writing process: "I think, when you watch a Breadwinners episode, it feels and it sounds like no other cartoon because it's, it's got that, that constant drive, that constant beat." ("Meet The Creators"), an unofficial elaboration on the previous statement, "The way we produce our show is pretty much unlike anything else that's been produced." ("Meet The Creators").

What follows these sentiments are only a few more words on the animation process and the collaborative angle the show's crew takes, but Gary's tone (and the show itself) is so clear and obvious that the second part of that sentence, I feel, can barely be classified as an inference. "Unlike anything else that's been produced", because that's what makes the show so unique, so fun and wacky and zany!