Ah, vacation.

I mean, I guess, “vacation”. I’m not really doing anything, just taking some time off. Chowing down on a leftover parmesan herb drop biscuit I made for Saturday night’s pre-Ice Bears game tailgating and jamming to The Runaways “Cherry Bomb”. Oh, yeah – and #cartoonButt.

I’ve been looking forward to a short trip back to the Tri-Cities to see my family while I’m off work. Thinking of what I’d like to do, who I’d like to see, what I’d like to eat, etc. With such anticipation comes an abnormally large amount of reminiscing about times past. Example: During last night’s thunderstorm I stood on the front porch watching the lightening and feeling the rain blowing on my face, remembering how much fun it was to hang out on the porch with my parents on warm summer nights watching storms come in.

Once while coming back from a high school football game – I’m guessing Freshman year coming home from Gatlinburg-Pittman – one of the guys had a leftover soda from the after-game snacks and offered it to the other passengers, “Hey, does anyone want this soda?” Without skipping a beat another player, behind him, shouted “Hey, does anyone want a knuckle sandwich?!” That has stuck with me to the point that I still use it to this day. I recently (jokingly, obviously, chill TFO) threatened my wife with such a culinary treat and immediately remembered how I recently learned Erin had gotten pages when she was in school. I was tickled so much by this fact that I couldn’t let it rest. So – speaking of knuckle sandwich – I asked if she had ever gotten a black eye.

I had gotten two before, though neither involved a fight of any kind or anything remotely heroic. No, once I was in the way of a bat during a wiffle ball game (and by “in the way” I mean to say “On the receiving end of”). Another time I was running and somehow didn’t realize I was headed right toward a picnic table my young self was just a perfect height to hit. Both times ended with shiners and both times it sucked for little me but they’re both funny now.

Erin’s response was “no” which isn’t anywhere near as funny. I later made a joke about our method of first-aid when someone received a shiner, which is purely fictional but it makes for a pretty good story so I give you #cartoonButt 013: “Hotdogs”:

Apologies to my sweet mother if we were not, in fact, too poor to buy steak but it makes sense to me now to say that so I guess we’ll see what her response is. Thanks for reading this dumb comic. You guys make me feel like a Patti Smith rant in the pants.

-JS