Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 10, 2009

don’t say alex doesn’t have a grip on (her) reality

GEE1A: AMEN!

You mean thank god for liberal, understanding, open-minded grandmas…

And yea for Alex recognizing her grandma’s wisdom.

Don’t worry, kid. Love provides drama enough.

Love the quote doctortoon. Where’s it from, or is it original?

Yes, Alex, Joan certainly appears stable and wise - a paragon of relationship wisdom*. * - compared to JJ’s history (and Mike’s, for that matter - all that time daydreaming about Nicole (while married to JJ), then (after JJ left) taking up with Kim (who’s not only young enough to be Mike’s daughter, I’ve always wondered if we would find out that Kim was BD’s daughter)).

Anyway, Alex, why don’t you ask Joan about that time she left her husband and child to ride cross-country on a motorcycle with two college guys and ended up joining their commune? Or how she ended up sleeping with the reporter who interviewed her for a story about her boss?

And they won’t be like the mo ther’s relationship, where he just drifts from one th ing to another..He will have his disability pay to help them along

Happiness can be SO boring.

hey,mbdot. kim…,b.d’s daughter. brilliant plot twist wonder if gb is slapping his forehead right now.

Just curious about GoComics - why can Alex say bleeep, but I can’t say bleeep? (The “bleep” was the horrible word “DAR*N, and GC bleeped it again)

Good news for Alex, I find children tend to turn out more like their grandparents than their parents. Maybe it’s the ying and yang of rebelling…

@benbrilling;

I once thought that nothing could be worse than boredom. I discovered that there are many things that are much worse…

But I also can’t imagine happiness being boring.

Ushindi; GT certainly knows the rules for publication; ours are a bit more flame-restrictive. DD; kids seem to either follow the parent’s footprints, or rebel, and we have little hope of predicting which. Unconditional love helps. I’ve read that kids and grandparents are natural allies.

turoc15 -

It could still be done that way, though I suspect GT has no intention of going that direction. A “Mike dates/marries BD’s previously unknown daughter” storyline would have been better exploited about 15 years ago. And a “BD had a child with another woman in wartime” storyline would have been more dramatically exploited if it were with that chopper pilot he had an affair with back in the Gulf War (ie during a period when he was already married and have a child)

All we know is that Kim was evac’d from Vietnam on a flight of war orphans, towards the end of the war, I think. She was adopted by the Rosenthals (?), was occasionally seen in the strip as a baby, learning to speak English in complete phrases (albeit complete phrases lifted from tv commercials).

She was rarely seen as a school-age kid, usually as a very smart kid who was contrasted with some dolt in her class who assumed that she had an unfair advantage in academic achievement because personal academic discipline was some sneaky endemic Vietnamese ability.

I forget if we saw her much in college before Mike met her working for Bernie (Skittles!).

Anyway, I don’t think we ever saw anything of her birth family, and BD did serve in Vietnam, so it could be written that way if GT ever so desired.

People - my original question regarding the word “d@rn” was rhetorical in nature, my point being it is NOT considered a terrible word in our society. Even very small children say “d@rn” or “d@rn it” when something happens. Bleeping “d@rn” is like bleeping “shucks”, or “heck”.