Who you calling old??? 10/26/18
/A couple weeks ago I was walking the mean streets of Tarrytown, NY. Well, they’re not that mean actually, unless you think ethnic restaurants and antique stores qualify as mean. At any rate, I was crossing the street. I had a green light but the “don’t walk” sign was lit up as well. Since there were no cars, I walked. As I started across a woman in a mini makes a right turn into the crosswalk and honks at me. I threw my hands up in one of those “You must be fuckin’ kidding me” kind of poses, when she rolls down her window, and says, “Read the sign, old man.” Now, being the mature individual I am, I may or may not have shouted back, “Have another donut, fatso!” But her comment stuck. Old man? Surely she wasn’t talking to me.
But of course, I let her remark get to me. I don’t think of myself as old, but to younger people, I am old. And that leads us to one of our new comics today.
The other subject we tackled is portion control, aka, how we fool ourselves. I have been through, at different times in my life, Weight Watchers, Atkins, The Power Hour (eat no carbs all day then whatever the hell you want for one hour each night), even the infamous Vegan Before 6. My preferred technique is to take what I like about each diet and combine them. For instance the Vegan one has no limit on bread, while Atkins loves bacon cheeseburgers, but leaves the bread out. I just combine the two diets and eat a bacon cheeseburger with a bun.
The real inspiration for this cartoon came when I was trying to attempt to use portion control, by bringing a side of potato chips to take into the office (the shared workplace where I write) for lunch. It was a narrow ziplock kind of bag. At first I started taking only as many cape cod salt and vinegars as I could fit (about 8 but who’s counting), but then I found if you broke them in half, you could get way more in there. Marv’s attempt at portion control is similar. As John put it, and we considered it for an alternate ending, “you’re making a mockery of portion control.” He said this as he was polishing off a dark chocolate covered pretzel, while mentioning the health benefits of dark chocolate, by the way.
If you’re old enough to be reading this comic on a regular basis you’re probably old enough (except for you Ali, Greg, Mark, Marissa and Maddie and all your buddies) to have no idea how you look to younger people and no idea how to manage portion control. But don’t worry. That’s why you have us (except we have no idea either).
Thanks for reading
Andy