CSotD: Too soon old and too late smart
Skip to comments
I don't remember how I stumbled across Fowl Language, but I've enjoyed the addition to my daily rotation, even though I see it as a grandparent and not a parent.
Or maybe "because."
Brian Gordon has been cartooning long enough that he could be drawing from memory, but, then again, he's still young enough to be one of those modern types who arrived at the Parenting Party late.
One of the interesting questions for cartoonists who work in the family humor area is whether they incorporate a time lag or just let'er fly. Lynn Johnston specifically built in a few years, in part to add a little perspective and in part to give her kids a bit of plausible deniability in the school lunchroom.
Other cartoonists work right in the now, though I think most of them run edgy story arcs past their kids for some level of permission. An advantage to this may be that you can capture frustrations that a little time would smooth over.
But, of course, knowing the background and methodology is separate from enjoying the comic: It's true or it's not and details of the source material are not only irrelevant but potentially a distraction.
That's applicable across the board: For instance, if you introduce a minority character, it may be that you are also a member of that minority, or married to a member, or live next door to or grew up with or whatever.
Machs nix.
Either the character rings true or rings false, and the rest is trivia. Maybe some mysterious woman sat for the Mona Lisa; maybe he did it all from his imagination. What would it change?
Anyway, this ain't the Mona Lisa, but it's true and it's funny and I'm not sure how many years into parenting you have to be, but it didn't take us long to figure out that the books were, while not entirely "bullshit," at least something to sample from, not to follow.
Specifically, today's panel brings back a memory of our second set of birthing classes. We'd done the Bradley method with our firstborn, but had moved out of Denver by the time, four years later, that #2 was on his way, and so we had to attend LaMaze classes and learn that.
Our group, as I recall, was about 75% first-timers and 25% old hands, and included a psychologist and his wife, who volunteered to give us some professional pointers at the last session.
He then laid out a hard-core behavorist prescription that included not comforting a crying child unless it has a pin in it, is demonstrably hungry or has a dirty diaper.
Otherwise, he explained, you reinforce crying, which is simply a learned response that creates an overly dependent, insecure, spoiled child.
At which point about 25% of the parents in the room realized that he and his wife were in the 75% and tried gently to reassure the other first-timers that children probably can, in fact, simply want to be held and it was probably okay to comfort a child who is sad or lonely, and that, after all, psychology is not physics and involves some subjectivity.
At which his wife bristled and announced that her husband had a Phd.
Well, all righty then.
God, how I wish we'd stayed in touch with them over the years.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(Frazz)
The juxtaposition here may only be clear to me, but it also ties into the topic of useless theoretical advocacy, and the connection is that, while all that "how to plan your retirement" hoopty-doo is total fantasy for most of us anyway, the idea of retirement itself is a fantasy for nearly all writers and artists.
First of all, the odds of making enough money in the arts to put some aside is ludicrous, while the few who manage to hit that lucky grand slam are, by that point, usually motivated by such an irrational fear of poverty that they will retire when you pry the brush/keyboard from their cold, dead fingers.
Which is to say that writers and artists rarely retire, and it's good that we enjoy the work, because the best you might hope for is, as in Bottomliners, a sort of purposeful disengagement, which could start with demanding to either have your compensation raised to match your workload or to have the adjustment made in the other direction, though I'm not sure I've ever actually seen that happen.
Which is the point of the joke, yes.
But I like the idea of taking demotions until you reach the point where it's not actually necessary for you to come in anymore, although, if it were offered in reality, I'd be inclined to turn it down.
If your job was simply a matter of tightening the screws on a piece of machinery as it passes your workstation, it might work out, but things are rarely that stable and objectively defined.
You end up in a no-win situation: If your replacement does the job better, it's embarrassing, while, if they don't — and yet everyone seems satisfied — it's infuriating.
When you leave, you have to leave, for your own sanity.
Granted, there are any number of journalists who wind up writing the Old Gaffer column at their sort-of-former paper, sometimes from a desk in the corner, sometimes from home, but it's very rare that they are former editors of the paper.
Once you've surrendered the helm, you need to get off the ship.
Come to think of it, this whole thing today could be a single juxtaposition, because becoming a grandparent also requires that you create a little distance and adopt a little humility.
At least enough to avoid becoming a cliche.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
Comments 2
Comments are closed.