CSotD: More Humpday Musings
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I’m always pleased when I can start Humpday with a cartoon that reflects something I was just thinking of, and I’ve been amused lately by old retired guys grocery shopping with their wives when it’s obvious that she’s been doing the task for decades and he’s wandering through Wonderland. She’s explaining the different kinds of tomato sauce and he’s being polite but doesn’t seem to be absorbing a whole lot.
The answer is, of course, that the cook should do the shopping, but cooking should be a shared responsibility. There’s probably a demographic marker on this, because I do see 30-something men not only shopping intelligently, but often with a toddler in the wagon because they’re also sharing that part of being a family.
I can’t identify just when everything changed, but I had to practically fight my way into the delivery room when Son #1 was born in 1972, while by the time Son #2 came along in ’76, my presence was assumed. In fact, that same year, the people I worked with were ragging on a fellow-employee who wasn’t planning to be part of the process.
And I’ll bet he couldn’t cook, either.
It did take some time to work out this still-ongoing revolution, and the first time I went out with an ardent feminist, which was 1970, we had to talk out how we were going to split the bill.
But dedicated as she was, she wasn’t unreasonable, so I picked up the dinner tab and she paid for the movie tickets, which, dinner being spaghetti, were close enough that we felt things were fair.
Funny thing is, the movie was Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, which had fabulous animation but hardly a feminist plotline. The next morning, the two of us set up a fundraiser for striking farmworkers in the San Luis Valley.
“Working things out” involved contradictions, which was much of the fun.
As it happens, that date took place two months after the first Earth Day, which was a big deal then, with people cleaning out riverbeds and doing other Good Deeds on behalf of the environment. We hoped it was the start of something, and in December, President Nixon presented the outlines for establishing the EPA, which helped address Abbie Hoffman’s objection to Earth Day: “I’ll pick up the Dixie cup, but who the hell’s gonna pick up Con Edison?”
Today, though we no longer need to fish tires out of our riverbeds very often, it seems Earth Day is fading and our current president is working to make sure nobody has to pick up Con Edison after all.
I don’t think it’s as grim a letdown as Whamond suggests, and this cartoon reminds me of a similar photo that anti-environmentalists circulated, which turned out to be phony: The litter was real but the event at which it had happened had nothing to do with Earth Day.
But given that we’re about to dump copper tailings into the Boundary Waters, I guess the anti-Earth-Day people won.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Speaking of changing times, I’ve got three good dictionaries: An American Heritage that was my mainstay in my freelance days, a Shorter Oxford, which is two bulky volumes and which is handy to look up the background of words, and a giant Webster which is so huge it comes with its own little stand.
But 99% of the time, I look words up online, mostly to check spelling but also for etymology and such. I’ll keep my dictionaries, but only for sentimental reasons.
About 30 years ago, I donated my encyclopedias to a youth home and they were pleased to get them, but these days, encyclopedias are on the “Thanks but no thanks” list along with collections of National Geographic and Reader’s Digest versions of books.
So it goes.
More ancient technology, and Jonathan Lemon gets credit for knowing that the string needs to be taut for a tin can telephone to work.
Comic books used to have filler pages with instructions on how to make a tin can telephone or one of those spinner things you made by looping thread through a button, which I can’t really describe but if you read comics in them thar days, you know what I mean.
The issue with tin can telephones was that you couldn’t be all that far apart. If you were more than a few yards from each other, either the string wouldn’t be taut enough or it would break, which meant that they only worked at a distance where you could hear each other anyway.
But so what? Messing around with them, or with spinning buttons, or cootie-catchers, was fun.
Fun used to be a thing, before the world became electronic and fully functional.
Horse is right. All that “following your dreams” and “believing in yourself” is a load of hooey. Not that you shouldn’t do those things, but when someone gets up to accept an Oscar or Grammy or whatever, they give that advice and we’re supposed to forget that thousands of other people have followed their dreams and believed in themselves and are watching the award show on TV instead of appearing on it.
Do it because you want to, not because you expect it to bring fame and fortune. The payoff is in the process.
One compensation of growing old is that as you go through life you begin shedding unwanted obligations, though I’m sure that’s easier for those of us who are single. OTOH, those retired guys out grocery shopping with their wives are likely enjoying the company rather than the actual event.
It’s a constant process of picking and choosing. I mentioned stewed tomatoes to my mother once and she asked if I had ever noticed that we only had them when my father wasn’t home for dinner, which I hadn’t.
A good marriage probably includes a whole lot of things nobody notices but that keep things mellow.
Rory’s been dreading his shearing, but it plants any number of Australian ear worms I’ll carry around the rest of the day.
(“Lime Juice Tubs” were the ships that brought English immigrants)
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.
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