Pickles by Brian Crane for December 20, 2013

Touché.

Now Earl is having a bad day.

they never do. just go with the flow.

The version I read, either from Ann Landers or Miss Manners, was – No one can insult you without your permission. But there’s still room to quibble with that. So I googled it and found: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. That one seems more air tight. A good saying to remember.

Permission [taken for] granted…

Opal has a habit of doing that.

Shopping … arrgh! Is that representative of the old hunting and gathering instincts? Every man I know decides what he wants before going in a store, goes in and gets it, pays, and then gets the heck out..Except in hardware stores, of course.

Why on earth does she need him to go shopping with her?

wow, i didn’t think there was yet another way to misuse ‘your’

The way I learned it is: “No one can make you feel bad about about yourself without your permission.”

Greater love hath no man, than he, who accompanies his wife Christmas shopping at the mall !

Whoa, thought I was reading “Pluggers” for a minute.

Opal could mess up a rock fight.

Why should this ruin his day? It’s a perfect opportunity to embarrass Opal by walking around making little old-man farty noises…pfert! ffrittt! poot!

If those two go shopping, who’s going to watch Nelson? Does this mean he has to go home to his actual house? He does have a house, doesn’t he??

“I DO” apparently conveys aquiencesent for life or at least the life of the Marriage.

And Earl’s day has just took a turn for the very worst…xxx

If you think that Earl’s fat, you really ought to get out more.

You all miss the punchline:

“I DO” = permanent permission

Thanks for all your comments in the past year. I will make a comment in return and it’s not meant at all as a criticism. .I read an article in TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, by William Safire that discussed Ronald Reagan’s use of the word “keister,” as in “I’ve had it up to my keister.” In Safire’s opinion the word has acquired the wrong meaning among many people, that of “buttocks.”.A reader commented, “…It is from Yiddish and referred to the display box the street merchants set up on ghetto streets. It became tripe-and-keister (tripod and display case) which confidence men used as all could be quickly folded when a policeman appeared….“It received its present slang meaning from one and only scene in a Hollywood (appropriate for Reagan) film in which a conman fell and crushed his case. He said, “I fell on my kiester.” The audiences, never having been on the griff, took it to mean something less recondite.”.No doubt with repetition over the years the rear-end reference will eventually become acceptable.