Recent Comments

1. about 12 hours ago on Lola

   I have absolutely no idea how to scan a QR code.

2. about 17 hours ago on Big Nate: First Class

   Up through the eighth grade, I went to school in a small town, after that in a pretty big city. But my younger siblings were in still elementary school, so I know that our big-city school system was set up just the same as the small town one was at that time: grades one through six were elementary, seventh through ninth junior high, tenth through twelfth senior high. Elementary was ostensibly further divided into primary, grades one through three, and intermediate, grades four through six. Subsequently, I guess, or in some regions of the country, intermediate went power-mad, seized grades seven and eight, and changed its name to Middle School. (In the primary grades as I knew them we had the same teacher all day; in the intermediate we had the same teacher all day, except that we switched for just one subject; after that each subject had a different teacher and classroom.)

   I presume the differences between Nate’s schooling and mine are partly due to decades having past, partly due to differing practices in different parts of the country, and partly due to creative freedom by the cartoonist. All of which are fine, even if they do give me an occasional dissociative jolt.

3. 1 day ago on Big Nate: First Class

   Wait … there was a Senior Class Trip, so there must have been a class treasurer for that, who collected funds from people who could afford to go. That still doesn’t explain why there would be a class treasurer for sixth graders — but if I keep worrying about why the sixth grade in Nate’s world bears so little resemblance to the sixth grade I actually once knew, I’ll be going far, far around the bend.

4. 1 day ago on Big Nate: First Class

   There was a student council with officers, but not separate councils or officers for different classes, as far as I recall. (I guess I have heard the phrase class president, but I think that was from TV or movies, not real life.) Those in student government would all have been seniors or juniors, certainly not sixth graders. I suppose they had a treasury to decorate the gym or cafeteria for dances, but I don’t recall ever having contributed to it in any way. Of course it was a long time ago.

5. 3 days ago on Big Nate: First Class

   I went through twelve years of public school (not counting kindergarten) and four years of college and never even heard of having a class treasurer. I don’t think I ever heard of it before today. I wonder how long ago that practice started.

6. 3 days ago on Big Nate: First Class

   But a middle school grade that would be in elementary school if they did things that way in that district.

7. 7 days ago on Rudy Park

   Thank you. Back then I was a little more on touch with young celebrities.

8. 9 days ago on Rudy Park

   I wonder if, when this strip originally ran, the person mentioned in the last panel was somebody I (and most of the previous commenters) had actually heard of?

9. 9 days ago on Lola

   I don’t deny that things taste different to different people, but it’s very hard not to believe that, some of the time when people say that certain things taste good to them, they are just flat out lying.

10. 10 days ago on Bear with Me

    I’m thinking of the This Week that was a syndicated supplement included with a number of U.S. Sunday newspapers from 1935 to 1969, as apparently is the version depicted here. Of course, I am remembering it from the 60s, and, while Bear With Me is drawn in the style of some cartoons from that period, the issue depicted is supposed to be from 1948. I don’t know what the magazine was like at that time.