The more things change, the more they stay the same. I’ve never quite understood that one, but whatever it means, it applies to both of this week’s comics. First the Train Set. Now John and I grew up differently from one another. He loves to build stuff, cut down trees, carve pumpkins, manly stuff like that that he probably learned from his dad, who in turn learned from his dad and so on. And so he is naturally enthralled with things like train sets. Me, I’m Jewish. When something needed fixing or building, my grandfather called the super, my father called the super and I call the super, and we don’t even have a superintendent. So we found a guy who is great at fixing stuff and call him when the need arrives, which is often. But back to the train set. Come to think of it, my dad did have a Lionel train set at one point. I can remember an exploding box car, which you tried to hit with a rocket launcher as the train was moving, but that’s about it. I imagine John’s childhood train set to be much, much more detailed. With the diversity of train set experience hanging between us, we settled on one thing we have in common, age. And let’s face it, when you want to show off your fancy toy train set to your grandkid and the kid doesn’t recognize anything in it, it’s a little deflating. And that was the influence for the Train Set comic. But not to worry, we are going to have a second train set comic next week. You don’t build (in this case, draw) a whole train set only to use it once.

Next up is the trip to the library. But what this is really about is clutter. Maria Kondo wrote a best-selling book about removing clutter. Really, people are attracted to books like hers, which to me seems like more clutter, but anyway… She says that you should only keep things that “spark joy.” I say, “spark this.” But she has a point. In my childhood home, the train set didn’t spark as much joy as the ping pong table it was sitting on, so after a while, bye bye train set with exploding box car and rocket launcher. I have a theory that there are two kinds of people in most relationships, hoarders, and chucker outers. I am a chucker outer. If I buy a new pair of jeans, which isn’t often, I put an older pair in the clothing bin in our local strip mall. Same with shirts, shoes, etc. My wife is a “collector.” In this case we switched roles and made Marv the hoarder. His wife Rachel wants to get rid of stuff. But when he was at the book fair at the public library, he saw so much stuff that sparked so much joy, he kind of forgets his mission.

7 years ago, my wife and I, empty nesters now that our kids were out of the house and graduated from college, sold our house and moved to an apartment. Now that requires a whole bunch of downsizing and, let’s face it, different things “spark joy” in different people. I remember a conversation we had upon moving in. Me: We cannot possibly have 4 sets of china in an apartment. She: Or 4 tv’s.

Guess how that ended? As I might say, you never know when a 4th person might come over and want to watch something different from what 3 other people are watching, so we really need 4. And as Joanie might say, this was my mother’s set, this was my grandmother’s set, this is my great grandmother’s and then there’s our everyday dishes and it makes me feel good to have them. So we compromised and kept everything, just in case.

That is it for this week. We will be back to you next week with two new ones, including what Al’s grandson wants to do with the train set.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John