2011-11-20
Explanation
This autobiographical-style comic is narrated by a red-haired character (resembling the author, Zach Weinersmith) reminiscing about childhood. The narrator recalls waiting by the street for his mom to pick him up from school. His mom drove a blue minivan, and he would try to estimate when it would arrive. His method, he admits, "wasn'''t exactly scientific" -- as a child, he would track the sequence of cars passing by and try to divine patterns: "Okay... I just saw a red car then a blue car, then a turquoise minivan. I think we'''re getting close." The child'''s logic was essentially a form of magical thinking, treating the color sequence of random cars as though it were converging toward the specific car he was waiting for.
The comic takes a melancholy turn in the final panel, where the narrator reflects that as an adult, he realizes this is how most adults experience waiting in life more broadly. The adult version of the narrator sits in a chair and muses: "I was excited when young, hopeful when I got older, content after that. Happiness must be coming soon..." The parallel is clear: just as the child used meaningless patterns to predict his mom'''s arrival, adults use the emotional trajectory of their lives to predict that lasting happiness is just around the corner, using equally unscientific reasoning.
The votey panel shows a woman at a desk remarking: "Huh. It also works if his last name is Weiner." This is a self-deprecating meta-joke by the author, Zach Weinersmith (whose surname is indeed Weiner), suggesting the comic'''s theme of hopeful waiting for something that may never arrive also applies as a pun on his name. A second votey image shows a caption reading "More accurate me" above a less flattering portrait of the author, adding another layer of self-deprecation.