We split the cheese and eat it in the back of his pickup truck and I feel almost happy about this weekend. After having been tossed out of bed at 5 AM and unceremoniously informed that I will not be attending my friend’s birthday party like I planned, I am ready to drown my feelings in dairy. He pulls over at a grocery store for supplies and emerges with enough ramen to feed us for three days and-more importantly to my eyes-a 1-lb hunk of Gouda. I spend the first three hours of the road trip alternating between sleeping and reading. This book becomes important to me in two very different ways.ġ) It’s the first comic book I ever read and enjoy later on, I will discover Tintin and Sandman and Spider-Man and Wonder Woman, but Runaways remains the first and best beloved.Ģ) This three-day camping trip to the Grand Canyon will last ten days.ĭespite the bribe, I refuse to talk to my dad. All in all, it’s probably a good thing that my tastes run cheap, although he sighs when he sees I’m clutching a copy of the first volume of Runaways, in which a group of teenagers discover that their parents are actually evil supervillains and run away rather than become complicit in their actions. I might be 9, but I’m well versed in the art of manipulation and guilt tripping, and as the non-custodial parent my dad is particularly susceptible. My dad only gets me into the car by promising a trip to Barnes and Noble.