At Spring Fair, Piro said that he had nine younger siblings. In the current arc, he showed up with six. Some, perhaps all, of the other three may be between Piro and Alan in age.
In a family of that size, and with a mother who has health problems and is hooked up with a flaky guy, a child of “nearly 12” might already have a lot of experience looking after the younger ones and could actually be quite helpful. Then again, some commenters have suggested that Alan has developmental problems, in which case he might add to Bernice’s and Luann’s challenges. I suppose we’ll find out one way or another as the week unfolds.
To refresh your memory, check the strips of 2019/03/04-06 and 2019/05/17. The resemblance isn’t perfect, as Alan’s nose isn’t the same shape as Howie’s, but there are other characters whose appearance has changed as much. For example, “Mrs.” Horner’s face was distinctly longer when we first met her than it has been lately, and Les was distinctly taller in high school than he has been since he started working at The Fuse.
I believe Bern was referring to a conversation from February of 2024. Besides telling Bern something about his family situation, Piro also confided that Luann’s jokes and Tara’s thrill-seeking were getting to be too much for him to take. I presume he wanted Bern to keep that confidential because he knew that Lu and Tara thought they were being helpful by distracting him from his troubles and he didn’t want to seem unappreciative.
I just did some more looking through the archives, and I see that on 2024/02/21-23, PIro told Bern that his mom was “in the hospital again” and that he was looking after “3 half-sibs and 3 step-sibs, ages 5 to 11.” He also said that his mom’s “new guy is a jerk.” That still leaves us with numerous questions to speculate about between today’s Saturday cliff-hanger and next week, when I presume that some of the answers will be revealed.
At Spring Fair, Piro said that he had nine younger siblings. In the current arc, he showed up with six. Some, perhaps all, of the other three may be between Piro and Alan in age.