Picking up from where we last left off, Rusty encounters his mom. She does NOT look happy over Rusty’s academic performance.
Needless to say, Rusty’s mom is very angry over Rusty failing his test.
This is a very tense moment for Rusty Duncan. His mom is not only angry with him. She’s grabbed him by the neck and is holding him up so that he’s literally eye-to-eye with her. There’s also truth in television to this. Much of the conflict that you’ll see in this story was based on my own experiences. Not doing well in school was treated by my parents exactly the same as lying to them, stealing something, defying a direct order, etc.
What you see on this page is also drawn from my personal experiences.
Remember Sam reassuring Rusty that everything would be okay? Nancy doesn’t like her telling Rusty that failing a test isn’t the end. That was something my own parents did. I had others tell me that failing in school wasn’t the end of the world; my parents somehow overheard this. Later, they yelled at me for listening to those people. They told me that their word was “law” and failing in school meant I was a failure in life. I was also threatened with bodily harm if they ever heard me saying or believing otherwise.
As for Rusty being physically intercepted by his mom on the way home from school, that also happened to me. It wasn’t my mother though. It was my father. It was sometime in the mid-1990s when we moved back to Ridgewood in Queens, New York. I was coming home from school and my father intercepted me halfway to our house. He forcibly grabbed me by the arm and led me all the way home, yelling at me as we went. Why? He had gotten a phone call that I had failed some kind of big test. I should emphasize that this is the only time he actually did that. Usually my parents waited until I got home to punish me for academic problems. Behavior in school was never a problem for me, so it was never about me being a troublemaker.
Anyway, that’s it for the completed pages. Be sure to look for Sunnyville Stories episode 8 around May/June. I will have this comic completed in time for Anthrocon.
That’s it for now. Subscribe to the RSS feed or via email if you haven’t already. If you represent a public or school library system and you’re interested in carrying Sunnyville Stories Volume 1, please contact Brodart Company as they carry the work wholesale. Make sure you buy a copy of Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 or get a copy from these other retailers. And don’t forget that copies of Sunnyville Stories are available on Amazon!
