The Year of Being Normal (Wednesday, September 5, 1973)
- It's the first day of Karl Shoemaker's senior year of high school, and his primary goal is to be as normal as possible. Karl is totally committed.
- His home situation isn't exactly the greatest. His dad has been dead for four years, and his mom has completely derailed. She has a ridiculous number of feral cats living in the house, and they poop on everything, including Karl's bed.
- Not only that, but his mom is also an alcoholic who likes to steal his money. Awesome.
- On this particular morning, Karl finds her passed out in bed with her boyfriend, Neil, new clothes all over the floor. This can only mean one thing—she raided his financial stash.
- Sure enough, Karl finds one of the cans he hides money in empty except for an IOU, which would be cool if his mom actually paid back her IOUs.
- As if on cue, his mom shows up in his bedroom and says she "had to" take his money because she wanted a night of freedom. OK, Mom—how about you exercise your freedom to get a better job? We're pretty sure that's what Karl is thinking.
- Karl shoves past Neil, who's naked, and heads for the bus stop, thinking about how to keep his "be normal" plan moving forward.
- The main reason he's so into this being normal thing is because he wants to avoid group therapy—aka the Madman Underground, as his best friend, Paul, calls it.
- Basically, it works like this—if you come from a bad home situation or do something that makes a teacher question your sanity, you get thrown into mandatory psychological therapy.
- Karl is in it because in fourth grade, he got emotionally overwhelmed during story hour and started crying.
- Paul, on the other hand, had it worse. His mom tripped in the street while trying to take a picture of her kids before church and got hit by a car. Since then, the two have been co-Madmen as well as friends.
- Unfortunately, part of Operation Be Normal involves ditching Paul. He's kind of the unofficial Madman Underground leader, and avoiding him is key to Karl's plan to escape group therapy.
- That's why Karl is taking the early bus to school: He and Paul always catch the second one, and by beating Paul to school, he can get things off on the right foot.
- Except there's a hitch in the plan—when he gets on the bus, Karl finds that Paul seems to have had the same idea. He also won't talk to Karl at all, which seems weird.
- Karl tries to compensate for this setback by sitting way in the back so that Paul will get off before him.