How do Byron's lips get stuck in the car mirror in chapter 2 of The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963?
Byron's lips become stuck to the car mirror on an extremely cold day. He is leaning over the outside mirror of the car, looking at himself from very close. While he is inspecting his reflection, he inadvertently gets too close to the mirror, and his lips become stuck to the glass. Due to the temperature, they are then frozen in place upon contact.
Byron is extremely distressed by the situation in which he finds himself; to the surprise of everyone, he is so worried and upset that he is crying, which alarms Momma. Dad, however, is amused by the situation. He observes that Byron has evidently been kissing his own reflection in the mirror, resulting in his lips becoming stuck to the glass. When Dad asks Byron whether his tongue is stuck, too, Byron protests, as best he can, that it isn't.
Dad is extremely entertained by the antics of...
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his wife and children as they struggle to free Byron. As far as Dad is concerned, this is adequate recompense for Byron, who is currently far too interested in his own appearance. Dad seems to hope that this will teach Byron to be less vain in future. Momma, on the other hand, is petrified that Byron will be stuck to the mirror forever, especially after the family's first attempt to free Byron by pouring warm water over his mouth simply results in him being frozen still more solidly to the mirror.
How do Byron's lips get stuck to the rear view mirror in "The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963"?
Byron was apparently kissing his own reflection in the sideview mirror of the Brown Bomber, the Watson's 1948 Plymouth. Since it was a bitterly cold day, well below freezing, his lips froze onto the mirror when they made contact.
The furnace at the Watson home was not working, so Dad called Aunt Cydney and she told the family to come right over to her house. Unfortunately, the Brown Bomber's windows were frozen solid, so Byron and Kenny were assigned the chore of scraping the ice off so the family could make the trip to Aunt Cydney's. Unhappy at being asked to work, Byron was pouting, and while Kenny was struggling with his share of the ice, Byron was goofing around. His friend Buphead had stopped by and was egging Byron on, and it was somewhere in the midst of their shenanigans that Byron admired his own reflection in the mirror, gave it a kiss, and got stuck.
Byron is going through a difficult stage of adolescence. He is rebellious, highly susceptible to peer pressure, and very concerned with his looks. It is important to Byron that he look and act "cool" at all times. To his chagrin, he ends up looking just the opposite when he gets his lips stuck to the mirror (Chapter 1).
In The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, what caused Byron's mouth to get stuck to the mirror?
It's an ice cold day in Flint, Michigan in the winter of 1963. But it's not too cold for Mr. Watson to send Byron and Kenny outside to do some chores. He orders them to scrape ice off the Brown Bomber, the family car named after the nickname given to a famous boxer called Joe Louis.
Kenny and Byron immediately set to work, each one scraping one side of the car. All of a sudden, Kenny hears Byron mumbling his name. Sensing something wrong, he goes to investigate, and when he does he sees that Byron's lips have somehow frozen to the side mirror. The whole family comes out to see what's wrong. Mr. Watson seems to find Byron's predicament rather amusing. He surmises that the only way that Byron could've got his lips frozen to the mirror was if he'd been making out with his own reflection.
As it turns out, he's not far wrong. Instead of scraping the ice off the car like he was supposed to, Byron was goofing around, and it was while he was playing the fool that he admired his own reflection in the mirror and planted a big kiss on it. That's how he ended up getting his lips stuck to the car.