Summary

Chapter 4 is a short chapter that is written as a poem (separate stanzas with no pattern to how many words per line). Matt is pulling into the Costco parking lot when he notices a woman with four children loading up her car. Matt finds the children cute so he waves just as the mother is bent over to pick up a large container of grape juice. He is taken aback when he notices “in the small of her large back stretched a single strained string, a thin strap of fabric” (44). Matt establishes that while he is not particularly offended by thongs, he wonders when Moms started wearing thongs.

The observation of the thong prompts Matt to launch into a monologue about how he used to fold his mother’s underwear “like a big American flag” (44). Matt next goes on to...