Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for November 27, 2020

An Iron Cross will suffice.

At least with Earl’s tattoo he’ll remember years from now which one is his mother.

Ah, a tattoo artist with great ideals / s

Her name is, as far as Earl is concerned, “Mom.” And that’s what his tat will say.

Duke’s got a “Mom” tattoo somewhere, and that’s why Earl thinks he remembers her.

That “swastika” comment isn’t funny!

I wonder if Honey considers the (presumably) illegal action of getting a tattoo for a minor to be a breed apart from Duke’s customary far more severe crimes (which she evidently has no moral compunction about concealing). If so, she might be Goody Twoshoes enough to report him for it. Kind of like how she was Goody Twoshoes enough to unite father and son in the first place (she didn’t REunite them because they’d never been together before to begin with), which kind of makes her partially responsible for every crime that Earl will go on to commit under Duke’s tutelage. Oh, good one, Honey…

Hold everything.

If Earl was nine in 1995, he was conceived circa 1985 to 1986. Duke and Honey had already been partners in crime for a long time by that point, which means that Duke fathered Earl during some interlude with another woman in the mid-eighties. Behind Honey’s back, so to speak.

I’m politely credulous to the notion that Honey couldn’t figure that out for herself — presuming that Earl’s birthdate isn’t just clearly stated in his social services file to begin with — so I guess she simply “forgives” him for what she would probably have considered an “infidelity,” since she just plain refuses to accept that Duke isn’t in love with her as she is with him.

Why would a stripper’s name be Boomer?

I wish Earl’s mom would have shown up eventually. (I assume she didn’t as I don’t remember that being a plot point back in the day.) Clearly he loved her and she sounds intriguing. It would have been fun to see her confront Duke after all this time.

When he heard two young women discussing getting a tattoo, a former-Special Forces friend of mine told them not to do it. He rolled up his t-shirt sleeve, “This dragon is how they identified me when I went AWOL.”

What possesses some really pretty women to deface/defile lovely expanses of epidermis with ink? What sins are they atoning for? How did it become “cool” to besmirch yourself? When these questions occur to me, I remember that our “President” is still Donald Trump. Clearly, stupidity is rampant…

I think I’ve figured it out. Duke got the name of the first girl/woman he slept with tattooed right above his AHEM. He had the next name tattooed above that one, and the next above that, and so on, until now when the list is apparently “tall” enough to reach his navel. So we can presume the name at the bottom of the list was one of Duke’s first three tattoos - that’s what he was preparing to show Earl, the tattoo directly above that area below all the other names- but Earl recognized his mother’s name somewhere in the upper half of the list before Duke finished unbuttoning his pants.

Duke’s apparent inability to recognize something as basic as the inappropriateness of unbuttoning his pants in front of a nine-year-old in a public place — with, admittedly, no sexual intent — says something about him. I wouldn’t venture to guess what.