Happy Summer from “Judge Parker”!
There’s a scene in Golden Girls that goes…
Blanche: What are you reading, Dorothy?
Dorothy: Apartment 3G.
Blanche: Oh, I haven’t read that strip in like 25 years.
Dorothy: Then let me catch you up. It’s later that same day…
Truth is, it’s hard to tell how much time is passing in a soap opera strip. This is known as “The Empire Strikes Back Temporal Conundrum” (well, it’s known as that now), in which Han and Leia’s story seems to occur at most over an exciting afternoon and evening while Luke’s supposedly concurrent (and equal time-length) Yoda-training arc has to at least run over several days unless he really is that much of a quitter.
So Mike and I always make sure to show that seasons do occur in Judge Parker, often starting a storyline every three months by focusing on blooming (or wilting) flowers. I also show Randy’s child Charlotte getting older so you get the sense that time is indeed a linear narrative and not simply spinning around a drain. And sometimes we just have a character say the equivalent of “As you know, Abbey, it is summer.” All so the comic doesn’t appear to take place entirely within three days in May until suddenly it’s Christmas and snowing.
The flip side, of course, is that ALL the characters in the strip must be aging, so that at one point Sophie will be the only high school student getting letters from AARP.
A Happy Father’s Day Story
I recently came across this photo of my Dad, which I’m going to assume was his headshot for a Martin Scorsese student film titled “Paisans.”
My dad passed away almost three years ago. But, of course, we still celebrate “Father’s Day.” And while when speaking of a loved one lost it’s customary to focus on memories (and there are more than plenty here: https://tinyurl.com/nzbluup) I’d like to focus on today’s celebration instead. And like any family gathering, it went 16 ways at once.
When my mom and I went to visit my dad at the cemetery we had flowers in a vase with stones inside for ballast. But with the high winds it was obvious that the stones wouldn’t be enough to keep the flowers upright. (Yes, there are conical holders to address such, but we didn’t have one.)
The initial reaction was to find more rocks to put in the vase. And so we started wandering around looking for more stones while also looking like we had either suddenly forgotten where my dad was buried or thought, “Wait, shouldn’t we be looking for the buried gold, too?” I had just bent down to pick up a few rocks when I heard my mom say, “I found a bunch over here!” only to turn around and see Mom about to take several stones off the top of a nearby headstone.
“Mom! Don’t! People left them there!”
“Oh. I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“So you thought they just landed there nice and straight?”
Alas, we did not find enough rocks. And it was at that point three things immediately came to mind: 1) I’m going to have to dig a hole in my father’s grave to secure the vase. 2) I have no idea what a Catholic cemetery considers “desecration of a grave site” because I’m so lapsed that when I hear the word “Bishop” I think Lance Henriksen in “Aliens.” And 3) I have nothing to dig with.
And so after standing there just long enough to allow for some heavenly force to drop a spade or maybe “dirt epoxy,” I got on my knees and starting digging with both hands as all the while an older woman and her daughter standing a few feet away stared at me as if I were the most utterly brazen and unbelievably incompetent grave robber ever. And that’s when I considered yelling while manically digging, “GIVE ME BACK MY WATCH!” because I thought my dad would have found that funny.
The flowers are now secure. So are the flags I dug holes for using my apartment keys that may no longer work. I love you, Dad. And a Happy Father’s Day to all the dads.
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