Ballard Street by Jerry Van Amerongen for December 29, 2016

Thelma, you have to approach Nelson as an engineer. Give Nelson a challenge, a desired product size and shape, and he will be more engaged. Right now you are “management” with fuzzy directions and inferior raw materials..

No dice.

Hey, c’mon, Thelma….

That’s the professional model rolling-pin-trough the head gag….

not some cheap five-’n-dime version.

You can’t pick up that baby at the Ballard Deli & Dollar Store…

or at some fly-by-night Halloween costume shop…

(the kind that pop up every October in long-vacant strip-mall storefronts

like mushrooms in decaying tree roots.)

You could probably special order one from StelBel’s costume annex…

which is probably what Nelson did….

but they’re not cheap.

To my mind, wearing one shows a sincere and very serious respect for the job.

He’s such a cut-up. But it’s all fun and games until he pokes her eye out.

C’mon Thelma, just roll with it.

He looks positively grim to me.

Thelma Needlemeyer was never known for having a great sense of humor.

Nelson Needlemeyer, on the other hand, has a terrific sense of fun and great comedic wit. He is also an inveterate practical joker.

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Back in high school, when he was taking Thelma to the Senior Prom he showed up at her house in a hired limousine, bearing a beautiful corsage, and resplendent his rented tuxedo.

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After making him wait the obligatory 20 minutes, thus forcing him to make small talk with her father, Thelma made her grand entrance, sweeping down the staircase like Loretta Young.

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She took one gander at Nelson and screamed " You’re not going to the prom like that, are you ?"

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" What ? " he deadpanned.

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“Those …those…Those SNEAKERS ! " she screamed.

Nelson was wearing bright red Keds !

He had his good dress shoes in the limo but this moment was too good to pass up.

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Her father was laughing to the point of tears.

Thelma’s mother , from whom she’d inherited her inability to take a joke, wasn’t amused.

Thelma did a 180 and fled wailing up the stairs with mother right behind her.

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Eventually, things calmed down and they went to the prom, and Nelson made sure it was a night to remember.

They’re both lefties

Thelma always knew he was a “pin head”

I want earmuffs like that.

Funny.

For what are they dicing all those carrots?

When I was a kid, I had one of those “arrow” ones.

Nelson’s just following Einstein’s advice — he doesn’t play dice with the carrots.

And on top of it all, they’re slicing – not dicing.

Dicing carrots? What does one do with the leftover sliced conic sections?