Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 25, 2012

Just turn off the phone.

“Maybe. Depends on my texting plan.”

Skye is looking pretty good right now.

Truest comment I’ve come across today. if my ex-wife and I’d agreed to remain “friends with benefits”, we’d almost certainly have been together now.

They’ll work it out. This ain’t “Mary Worth”.

That’s one old-school mixing board GT has drawn in that studio, with VU meters instead of LED strips.

And remember that “maybe” is yes and “I don’t know” is also yes.

It must be hell to live with Alex’s insecurities.

We’d been living together for 7 years and I said: Ya wanna get married this year? She said: Sure, why not. It was romantic as all get out.

I proposed to my wife two weeks after we met. And she married me, too, after a decent interval so we could get to know one another a little better … five years. And now we’ve been married more than ten. But she knew my intentions from the beginning. Actually, it wasn’t the being married that slowed us down. After we had lived together for a couple years, the BEING married didn’t seem to scary. It was the GETTING married that freaked us out. All the hoopla. We finally found a way around most of that. Now, wedded bliss! She still hasn’t seen her mistake, thank God, and says she’d marry me all over again. Apropos Toggle and Alex: somebody meeting the two of them for the first time would probably think it was Toggle who had problems. Hah!

“I always did”…me too, pretty much. I’ve had at least thirty wives, three of them were mine. I’m still in hiding. The only way I can keep from being a fool is to stay in the cave, the one with the walls and the sentries…

The next cartoon should start Alex in intensive counseling.

Given Alex’s upbringing, especially the time she had to spend with JJ and Evil Zeke, she’s actually doing fairly well.

" Trust wiwo to snark …"

You know he must work for Sweetwater, magicwalnut.

I can’t remember, did Sherm loose his hearing in Nam or was it when he was married?

And look how he turned out……

Sherm gives the right advice. Even if Leo says “yes” electronically, Alex will nag him to repeat “yes” in person. And once they’re married, she’ll probably demand daily reassurances both electronic and verbal.

I am really enjoying following this story. I have been following since before he got injured. Great story line. I hope he says yes!

From yesterday:Gokie5: “The current marriages of most of Trudeau’smain characters have endured for decades (Mike and Kim, B. D. and Boopsie, Rick and Joan). So has Garry’s. I would guess that Leo and Alex will be in it for the long term.”

Yes, but there’s also Mike’s FIRST marriage to consider (and Alex is her mother’s daughter, like it or not). Still, Leo is Trudeau’s best bet for giving Mike a grandchild, and nobody else is a likely candidate for bringing another birth into the strip before Trudeau’s inevitable (but hopefully not imminent) retirement (despite Sam being born about 20 years ago she’s just now entering her teens, and both Jeff and Zipper seem unlikely candidates for fatherhood at this point).

My “I give them two years” was more based on what I’d expect if they Alex and Leo were real people. They’re too young, their backgrounds are too different, their paths for the future (so far) too divergent. Alex still has schooling to do, and she ultimately wants to work at the CERN Large Hadron Collider or somesuch place. Leo is building a career at his recording studio. And we mustn’t forget that Alex dislikes Leo’s mother almost as much as she dislikes Zeke (and the disdain is mutual).

People have offered Leo’s disinterest in Drew (whom Alex considered a threat) to be “proof” of Leo’s undying devotion to Alex, but maybe Drew just wasn’t Leo’s type. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Alex meets Skye. My suspicion is that Alex wouldn’t even PERCEIVE Skye as a threat, in the way she did Drew, because Alex’s ideas about the standards of female attractiveness are as conventional as those of most of the commentators here.

I have a friend, who like Newt, and here, always said yes, well at least three times. Had another friend from ‘Nam, tiny guy with PTSD, who said “yes” four times to big “Swedish type” females who’d get drunk and beat him to a pulp. Now HE should have learned to say “no”.

Will Alex tweet something about her shorts bunching?

I’ve read all the comments and I can neither agree or disagree. Too bad I’m too old to run for office.

Kind of like the old tube model TVs. Growing up in the fifties, my dad had a card that cross referenced TV problems (horizontal control etc.) with likely tubes that failed. My dad would take the likely tubes down to the Walgreens Drugstore which had a tube tester and replacement tubes. He’d find the bad tubes, buy replacements and put the new ones back in the set and we’d be back in business. I’m pretty sure that our first solid state TV just about broke his heart.

Two words, Leo: “Common Law”

Definitely, as in, “it’s definitely ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”