My Favourite Character

For those of you who were clammering in anticpation of more travel logistics, this is the chapter for you. Basically all that happens in this chapter is Judd and Vicki go back to O'Hare to get Judd's car. Oh and they say The Prayer and become Christians, but really that's it. Only someone as monumentally untalented as Ellanjay could make the apocalypse seem so boring.

But we are introduced to someone who's currently my favourite character: the cab driver. He's a walking cliche, the rough, tough cabbie, but right now he seems to be the only one, besides Ryan, who is affected by this disaster.

As the cabbie drives Judd and Vicki to the airport, we get this reflection from Vicki.

Now she realized, of course, that for at least the last two years--since her parents had become believers--she herself had been the problem. She had somehow realized that her life would not be her own if she became a Christian like her parents. They had told her and told her that she didn't need to clean up her life before she came to Christ. "Jesus accepts you just the way you are," her mother had told her. "He'll start showing you what needs to be changed and will hlep you change."

Okay, I'll give Ellanjay some credit here: that last statement is accurate. As we Christians are so prone to say, "The Church is a way station for sinners, not a country club for saints." Jesus didn't make the prostitutes promise to stop being prostitutes or the tax collectors to stop collecting taxes before he accepted them; he accepted them, warts and all. So as much as it pains me to admit it, I've got to give Ellanjay props.

Okay, I'll admit I have peeked at the wikipedia page for Left Behind: the Kids and apparently Vicki and Judd do hook up. But I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they don't hook up until the last year of the tribulation. I guess the thought of two ripe teenagers hooking up in the aftermath at so young an age, didn't sit well with Ellanjay, so at least we don't have to suffer through their attempts at romantic dialogue. :shudders in memory of Buck and Chloe:

Anyway, it's little details like these that make me like the cab driver so much. We ought to find it in our hearts to give him a name like we did for Jimmy Bats.

The cabby had fallen silent long ago. He kept taking huge swigs from a mug of coffee and opened his window so the cool night air filled the car. Vicki shivered and wished he would shut it, but didn't say anything. The way he looked, he'd probably been driving for twenty-four hours. She was not about to discourage anything that would keep him awake.

I suppose it is unrealistic that cab drivers would be working at all in the aftermath of the disaster--wouldn't it be more likely that their bosses would call them back to headquarters so they could get an accurate head-count on who's missing and who isn't--but still I like the cab driver because he is concerned with something besides himself. He reminds me a little of the lamp-lighter from The Little Prince.

Vicki then says The Prayer which once again, I have to give Ellanjay some props for: it feels a bit more natural and less wooden than The Prayer in the adult book. Kudos to Ellanjay for that much.

Anyway to wrap things up, they get to the airport and Vicki finds out that Judd too, has said The Prayer. So now they are both RTCs.

:shudders: I feel so unclean giving Ellanjay kudos. I hope this doesn't become a habit. :shudders again: