Anne's dial tone hum.

The interesting thing is that one of the first extended subplots of the middle years is the final fate of Thelma Baird. As it stands now, we're about to have Elly dismiss bingo because it's not to her tastes and be mildly warmed by the fact that the woman she sees as sort of a proxy aunt has found herself male companionship for the last few years of her life.

The reason that I mention this is that instead of being equally touched by this, Anne is scornfully dismissive of Thelma's finding love late in life owing to poorly disguised jealousy and something else that should be obvious when you read her Liography and start reading crap about Cinderella and Prince Charming and all the rest of the sheer hokum that they're poisoning today's little girls with.

This is because it's obvious to me that Annie is one of the first victims of Disney Princessery and decided romance is a con-job because Steve turned into a normal man with emotional needs she didn't understand and refused to meet. I'm not absolving the jerk for running around on her but I also ain't sparing her for making snippy comments about his baffling silences when it's obvious to anyone with a soul that he feels inadequate most of the time. Too bad for both of them that Elly assumes that the only possible reason love becomes a dial tone hum is that parents have to chase after children. She might have been able to help Annie.

Seek understanding through stereotypes.

The interesting thing about looking a year ahead is having to remember that we have to deal with John filled with anxiety and moaning about the expense of long-overdue upgrades to the Pattermanse. His grumpy comment about how his grandchildren will be forced to pay for the renovation, his need to seek out the advice of Doctor Asshole Chauvinist Boor Ted and his whining about his joy wagon all paint a picture of a victim of cathode ray poisoning that assumes that the cheapskate he married is, like all silly women, destined to spend him into the poorhouse because media imagery and his sources tell him so.

When you factor this in with his default belief that his children are defiant monsters who want to knock him down, it's sort of obvious that John seeks to explain the behaviour of those around him via self-serving stereotypes because he isn't capable of building a mental model on his own. Thinking of Elly as a silly wifey who wants to spend him into the poorhouse is akin to having a prosthesis to replace a lost or deformed limb. People have to be pigeon-holed into someone else's mental model because he can't build one on his own any more than he can understand what they want just by looking at them. More on that tomorrow.