VL-IV 1: To Our Children's Children pgs. 4/5

[Robin Landseadel]

Zoyd finds out where the breakfast cereal went:

	"Just dig yourself," shaking his head at the chocolate
	crumbs on the dog's face, "I know she fed you, Desmond,
	and I know what she fed you too.”

Count Chocula, and a real bad idea considering how toxic chocolate can  
be for dogs. Then again, as TRP makes great pains to point out, these  
folks in and about these parts ain’t exemplars of anythin’.

Zoyd hits up the Vineland mall:

	. . .going into More Is Less, a discount store for larger-size women,
	where he bought a party dress in a number of colors that would
	look good on television, paying with a check both he and the
	saleslady shared a premonition would end up taped to this very
	cash register after failing to clear. . .

After ratting his hair and getting some gas into his car and a petite  
ladies’ chain-saw at the Breez-Thru gas station, 15 year-old Slide  
slides up, acting all world-weary with the old boy:

	"Uh-oh, is it that time again already?"

	"This year it snuck up on me, hate to think I'm gettin'
	too old for this."

	"Know the feeling," Slide nodded.

	"You're fifteen, Slide."

	"And seen it all.

Now that Zoyd’s on the road, his radical couture is freakin’ out a sub- 
teen in a neighboring Winnebago:

	"Gimme a break," he yelled over the engine noise, "it's, uh, a
	Calvin Klein original!"

	"Calvin doesn't cut nothin' bigger than a 14," a girl younger
	than his daughter screamed at him out her window, "and
	you ought to be locked up."

A couple things to note. First: the pervasive TV culture in all the  
food and other consumables, and second: all of these child of children  
who never really grew up.