Fore? No, For.

And just like that its a golf strip. Nothing says romantic like flowers in a box. Better yet, theyre not from Mimi’s hubby Gil, but from her golf coach in ‘Zona, Erika. By the time they got from Arizona to Michigan, I’m sure they were as dried up as a box of pretzels. Oh well, its the thought that counts.

I dont like Mimi’s club length; it looks to be longer then she is. I use a 46-inch driver and I’m 6’3″. Do the math. But this one’s on the artist not Henry.

Nobody teaches golf like that – watching a good swing is fine but the kids need to swing and have Mimi critique them. Yeah there’s the impact; is the idea to try to miss? I think they know contact is supposed to happen. And where’s all the practice balls nearby? The swing is a kinetic motion with many parts to it, only way to learn is by many many repetitions, learning one part of the swing at a time and building on it. I hit balls on the range for 3 years before I played a round. We can add golf to the sports Henry knows nothing about.

And I dont wear a golf glove but normally you wear one on the opposite hand of the side youre swinging on – righties wear it on the left hand. You grip a club with the palm of one hand and the fingers of the other. But Mimi has one on her right hand after being shown swinging righty.

Yas Queen, Be Careful What You Wish For

Oh look, Mimi’s back in town, officially handing over the reins of jayvee softball to Cami. Mimi’s off to coach golf… where? Milford High? Scottsdale? We’ve been missing some Mimi (and Meemaw) updates to fill in where they are on their respective journeys. I trust Henry will fill us in on those in his own good time, maybe by July.

Cami’s posting the softball roster fairly realistically. Sometimes coaches post them before giving notice to the players that they’ve been posted, but they pretty much never hang out to watch the kids look at them. Why open yourself to questions about who made the cut and didn’t? Not that standing there with a bunch of your peers to see who made the cut and who didn’t isn’t awkward enough. I remember having similar feelings in grad school when exam grades got posted. They were posted by Social Security number and, as mine was significantly different than everyone else’s in my class, folks could figure out which one was mine straight away. I was glad when they changed to posting by only the last four digits of our SSNs.

Keri’s nemesis Dorothy has made the team; how did Keri know about that on Friday? Dorothy’s slip about making it “on her own” is leading. Did a family member have pull in getting her on the cheerleading squad? Not as much as Gil did after getting Keri a slap on the wrist for bringing a butter knife to school kicking Dorothy’s #&% . Dot’s got some knuckles of her own now, so maybe Keri should think twice before reenacting kicking her #&%.

Then again, Dorothy’s a leftie; maybe she and Keri will find some common ground.

Confusion 2.0

In the stands we have the Thorp family cheering on their father/husband; in 40 years of reading this strip Ive never seen Gils family in the stands during a game. I would say Jami is a little too dressed up for a basketball game; Mel looks a little more typical. Although usually a full gym is hot as hell and I wouldnt be leaving my coat on for its entirety. Its almost a rebel look with the jacket color the same as army fatigues. She looks very boyish as a matter of fact.

Apparently they brought Keri with them because Mel (and why is she sitting next to Mimi instead of her BF?) asks where she is. Guess Mimi has to keep these 2 lovebirds apart even at a basketball game where for the most part, in my experience anyway, the kids rarely watch the game, instead checking their phones and texting/ watching videos.

Then P3 is a head scratcher. There sit Keri and…Tobias? Where did everyone behind them go? And why does Mimi answer a question about one person with an answer about 2, or more? And why is Luke staring in their direction? Worry about your team buster. Youve got a game on your hands still.

So many questions.. so little answers… I know that was a line in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory somewhere.

“Know who else cleans and jerks? My mom!”

Finally, a strip we can snark on! The last several strips have been straight up serious as they brought to attention a serious imbalance on the benches and sidelines and in the dugouts. I was halfway expecting acknowledgement that Gil was doing his part by bringing in Emmett Tays, but then he’d have to sheepishly acknowledge that Emmett was getting paid half of what Kaz was getting paid – and that half of nothing is nothing. Was Kaz really volunteering all these years?

Time for the big Milford Lift-A-Thon! Gil has been putting in all the hard work while Mimi’s been off polishing her tonsils golf game. Nice to see he’s been spreading the weight around. For a moment there I thought that big hand was his, not Mimi’s, and that he’d been going at it Quagmire style while she was in Arizona.

What could go wrong here? Which one of Gil’s basketball players will suffer a season-ending injury during this fiasco? How stripped down and greased up will Luke Martinez be when he makes his grand entrance? We’ll see soon enough. In the meantime, I’m content to drop another Regular Show reference and see if Mimi plays Starla to Gil’s Muscle Man.

My Weekend, My Choice

In the seven months or so since Henry Barajas took over this strip, it’s often felt like we the readers have been under a constant barrage of modern issues (school shootings, drug overdoses, LGBTQ+ rights) along with some timeless ones (marital discord, dying parents/grandparents, financial insecurity). It’s hard enough for us olds, what with our fully developed prefrontal cortexes and less raging hormones. Heck, we’re constantly adding new tags to TWIM just to try and keep up with all the new stuff. Now imagine what it must be like for a teenager. You remember teenagers, those people who were once one of the target audiences for newspaper comic strips, don’t you?

Tobias, formerly Tabatha, Gordon embodies all of that. Even with the increasing acceptance of trans people in a podunk tank town like Milford today’s society, making the decision to come out as one can’t be easy. Add to that the pressure of having your football coach convert you from a kicker into a running back without the benefits of hormone therapy. No wonder Gil has Tobe hitting the weight room.

On top of it all, consider Tobe’s home life: born to teen parents who, unsupported by their parents, might’ve felt compelled to marry and eventually divorced. Being taken in with his unwed mom by said Gil and family. Finally, living with the knowledge that your mother considered aborting you. Too many teens wish to be dead or to never have been born as it is; that Tobe is feeling the same should come as no surprise.

Gil, the only man to apologize to Mel (if you can call this an apology; recall she didn’t accept it) responds to Tobe’s revelation kinda ham-fistedly. He practically takes credit for Tobe’s birth while dissing Tobe’s biological father. Then, as if to make amends, he reinforces the fact that Mel didn’t abort Tobe and that that was the wise choice. Hey, we don’t always say the right things in the right way to the people who need to hear those things the most, but sometimes the effort is what counts.

Sorry it took me so long to get this post up. Outside the “trans kid magically becomes multi-sport star athlete in their new gender” angle, I found very little to snark about. Watching the new remake of All Quiet on the Western Front while composing this post didn’t help, either.

What I dont find attractive is that seaweed you’re eating

The girls are having a post practice lunch. Nonsense. Nobody in teaching golf does that. They just met. The writer knows nothing about golf its obvious. Or football or basketball. Why fly to Arizona for 1 lesson and complain to someone about that. Talk about your golf game. This is a teaching pro not A MARRIAGE COUNSELOR.

This girl isnt David Leadbetter. Even so, Mimi cant afford his prices – $3,500 for 3 hours. Heh.

And Ericka, its Mimi. You were just calling her Mrs. Thorp 2 days ago. You dont just call her Emily.

I wrote much more but it got erased and I dont have the heart to do it all again.

Talk to the Stick

Smash cut from the Milford gym (and Kaz’s not-quite-scripted departure) across the country, to an actual, real place. I’ve been to Phoenix a couple of times on business and the aerial view on final approach of the artificial oases of the golf clubs and manicured lawns of Scottsdale never failed to shock me. I don’t think I was as shocked as Mimi appears to be to learn that the woman carrying her clubs is not her caddy, however.

One of the mild surprises of nu-look Gil Thorp is how Barajas manages to work modern problems, if not modern solutions, into the stories without making them the central issue of the arc. The active shooter drill gave Keri a PTSD attack at the Linda Linda’s concert but, unless you count Keri getting off easy for clocking Dorothy after she made fun of Keri’s PTSD, we’ve heard nothing more about it since. Tabatha Gordon came back as Toby to nary a ripple – not even when he turned into a superstar athlete in both of the boys’ sports he went out for. Monday’s potential teen drinking and driving problem: no sweat! Unless you count the sweat poured out during Gil’s conditioning drills.

Here, we might be seeing a little bit of Mimi’s white privilege showing, in that she assumes this Black woman to her right is there just to carry her clubs and nothing more. This Ericka Carter may be a shout-out to a staff guardian at a Lutheran ministry, an ex-soldier turned diesel mechanic, or an attempted murderer but she is not here just to tote Mimi’s bag. Bigger picture is to connect the dots that took Mimi from Milford to Scottsdale – Meemaw’s death, budget cuts killing Mudlark girls’ hoops, Gil’s tacit support of Mimi’s attempted resurrection of a golf career? Let’s hope those dots get connected over the coming days.

Mele Kalikimaka ‘n stuff

Season’s greetings, gentle readers. I’m here from another hemisphere to take us into the transition out of football and into whatever comes next. Let’s check in with the Thorps to see what’s been going on off the field. I’m not gonna attempt to touch Festivus but I recommend that you check out the Mopped Up Thorp Festivus post; it’s awesome.

December 23, 2022

Oh my goodness this is getting sad fast. Meemaw appears to have left the nursing home to be in home hospice care. A detached-looking Gil stands in the doorway. I wonder if he ever knew how much Meemaw wanted Mimi to divorce him and try to revive a golf career we never knew she had. At least the Thorp kids are providing us the look at a Milford bonfire we didn’t get during football season.

KXCI is a community radio station in Tucson. It also streams online. There’s no reason to wonder, then, whether Milford has moved west of the Mississippi, or get into the matter of those stations east of the Mississippi beginning with K (e.g., KDKA in Pittsburgh, KYW in Philly) or those west of the Mississippi beginning with W (e.g., WHO in Des Moines).

In case you were wondering, The Both was a duo consisting of Aimee Mann and Ted Leo (but no Pharmacists). They’ve recorded a single , self-titled album to date, in 2014. The lyrics are from their song “Nothing Left To Do (Let’s Make This Christmas Blue).”

December 24, 2022

Now we get the triple-header Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa strip. I am not a member of the tribe so I did not know that ugly Hanukkah sweaters are a thing. I did, however, know that Hanukkah menorahs have nine candles, not seven as appear on Rachel’s sweater. I also did not know that Tobias and Mel were canonically Jewish. Kaz is looking a little distracted tbh. Probably thinking about his upcoming bris.

The Thorps manage to smile for their family photo save for Keri, who’s showing off her knuckle dusters and the reason Pedro Martinez has been hanging around. (meta: Moon Mullins points out Keri is flashing the universal symbol for eating at the Y, so not completely out of character.)

Finally we have… who? I honestly do not know and I feel guilty for not knowing. This isn’t the Brown-Hiatt family from a few years bock.* Is it one of Keri’s volleyball teammates? Help me out here, please.

It is now after midnight where I am and so, while you may have several hours to go, it is already Christmas Day here. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and we’ll see you again on Boxing Day.

*This should read “a few years back,” but I’m leaving this typo in since that’s what I was drinking on Christmas Eve.