Maybe we also need a “No, parents are NOT that stupid” tag.
But is there any internal logic to this?
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I think we’ve seen this one here before. Going commando was referenced on Friends 20 years ago, so someone Jeremy’s mom’s age should not misunderstand it.
Just a brain freeze by Connie. She meant ‘incommunicado’.
And shouldn’t Jeremy be the one overreacting (specifically, being grossed out or at least embarrassed, his general reaction to anything regarding his mother’s body)?
And why would she expect anybody to notice she’s not carying a phone?
And…?
This is definitely a CIDU rerun, but clicking on the “Zits” tag doesn’t turn up the first appearance, so it was probably pre-meltdown, unless it was missing the tag.
What bothers me about this sort of gag is that we’re expected to believe Connie is unaware, yet the cartoonist assumes all his readers know what it means.
Ah, “incommunicado” does make sense.
Still not sure why she expects her husband and son to notice, though…
And I agree that it should be Jeremy reacting that way, not Walt — it would be more internally consistent, too: the old farts don’t know what the word means, but the teenager is painfully aware and sensitive to it.
Bill: I had the same curiosity about why she would expect her family to notice, but then it occurred to me that some people just have their phones out all the time, even when they’re out eating dinner with their family. So then that the lack would be noticeable.
I don’t think the strip has given any indication that Connie is such a person, though.
Like the guy who woke up in the recovery room after elective surgery and said “CIRCUMCISED! THAT was the word I wanted!”
It probably would have worked better as “when we were out last night, I was going commando the whole time.”
@CiduBill: Not better enough!
Mark in Boston.
I’m not sure I get that. What other word is there? And isn’t circumcised the word a guy *wouldn’t* want. Or did he stumble with words like “tip” and “cut off” and not “foreskin”.
Free communicado!
@woozy: The other word was “castrated.” But I heard the joke (way back in the 1960s) as a father bringing his newborn son in to the hospital for a medical process, not a guy taking himself in.
I suppose we can assume the adult guy in Mark in Boston’s version was converting to Judaism or Islam or somesuch, but I think the “father’s error” version requires fewer second thoughts. Both versions are pretty icky, though.
Baby son, is better. Adult circumcision is pretty uncommon and the general public opinion in the light of casual broad jokes is guys don’t want anyone coming near that with a knife (unless it is for surgical enlargement– in which case it doesn’t make sense— Maybe “Dang! I really thought the word was ‘Engorgement'”). But even with the baby son it’s a bit hard to figure out what the mistake is. Circumcision and Castration don’t sound alike.
Actually it be funnier if a farmer brought bull or a horse in to the large animal veterinarian and afterwards said “Castration! That was the word I meant!”. It would need work what actually happened by the image of a mohel and bris for a farm animal is pretty funny. And that most animals have sheaths rather than foreskins makes it painful if that is a requirement in these jokes. (Which it seems to be.)
If the guy in the joke were being curcumcized for religious reasons, it wouldn’t be taking place in an operating room. And he’d remain conscious.
Unless that was one hell of a foreskin.
Back to the comic strip: Do people sometimes speak of going without their cell phone as “going commando”? It makes sense if they do. Some people feel naked without their cell phones even though others can’t see their lack of certain accessories.
Right here some years back — I’m sure I’d be stunned o know quite how many years — I asked whether someday people were going to have nightmares about leaving home without their cellphone, similar to nightmares about leaving home in their underwear.
A couple of people responded that they’d already had the no-phone nightmare.
Well, that’s one nightmare I’m unlikely to have, since I’m one of the last half-dozen or so people in the country who doesn’t carry or even own a cellphone.
But I don’t feel the loss of that particular bit of nightmare bait, since I have plenty of others to keep me busy. I still have nightmares about being about to go on stage in a play and realizing I forgot to learn my lines, and it’s been more than fifty years since I’ve been in a play.
While doing my military service, we were practicing patrol/ambush in the woods; my team was patrolling and the sergeant was worried about an ambush, so I told him to phone the enemy to locate them and it worked. The colonel late issued an order that phones had to be off while on duty. This was in ’98.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I think we’ve seen this one here before. Going commando was referenced on Friends 20 years ago, so someone Jeremy’s mom’s age should not misunderstand it.
Just a brain freeze by Connie. She meant ‘incommunicado’.
And shouldn’t Jeremy be the one overreacting (specifically, being grossed out or at least embarrassed, his general reaction to anything regarding his mother’s body)?
And why would she expect anybody to notice she’s not carying a phone?
And…?
This is definitely a CIDU rerun, but clicking on the “Zits” tag doesn’t turn up the first appearance, so it was probably pre-meltdown, unless it was missing the tag.
What bothers me about this sort of gag is that we’re expected to believe Connie is unaware, yet the cartoonist assumes all his readers know what it means.
Ah, “incommunicado” does make sense.
Still not sure why she expects her husband and son to notice, though…
And I agree that it should be Jeremy reacting that way, not Walt — it would be more internally consistent, too: the old farts don’t know what the word means, but the teenager is painfully aware and sensitive to it.
Bill: I had the same curiosity about why she would expect her family to notice, but then it occurred to me that some people just have their phones out all the time, even when they’re out eating dinner with their family. So then that the lack would be noticeable.
I don’t think the strip has given any indication that Connie is such a person, though.
Like the guy who woke up in the recovery room after elective surgery and said “CIRCUMCISED! THAT was the word I wanted!”
It probably would have worked better as “when we were out last night, I was going commando the whole time.”
@CiduBill: Not better enough!
Mark in Boston.
I’m not sure I get that. What other word is there? And isn’t circumcised the word a guy *wouldn’t* want. Or did he stumble with words like “tip” and “cut off” and not “foreskin”.
Free communicado!
@woozy: The other word was “castrated.” But I heard the joke (way back in the 1960s) as a father bringing his newborn son in to the hospital for a medical process, not a guy taking himself in.
I suppose we can assume the adult guy in Mark in Boston’s version was converting to Judaism or Islam or somesuch, but I think the “father’s error” version requires fewer second thoughts. Both versions are pretty icky, though.
Baby son, is better. Adult circumcision is pretty uncommon and the general public opinion in the light of casual broad jokes is guys don’t want anyone coming near that with a knife (unless it is for surgical enlargement– in which case it doesn’t make sense— Maybe “Dang! I really thought the word was ‘Engorgement'”). But even with the baby son it’s a bit hard to figure out what the mistake is. Circumcision and Castration don’t sound alike.
Actually it be funnier if a farmer brought bull or a horse in to the large animal veterinarian and afterwards said “Castration! That was the word I meant!”. It would need work what actually happened by the image of a mohel and bris for a farm animal is pretty funny. And that most animals have sheaths rather than foreskins makes it painful if that is a requirement in these jokes. (Which it seems to be.)
If the guy in the joke were being curcumcized for religious reasons, it wouldn’t be taking place in an operating room. And he’d remain conscious.
Unless that was one hell of a foreskin.
Back to the comic strip: Do people sometimes speak of going without their cell phone as “going commando”? It makes sense if they do. Some people feel naked without their cell phones even though others can’t see their lack of certain accessories.
Right here some years back — I’m sure I’d be stunned o know quite how many years — I asked whether someday people were going to have nightmares about leaving home without their cellphone, similar to nightmares about leaving home in their underwear.
A couple of people responded that they’d already had the no-phone nightmare.
Well, that’s one nightmare I’m unlikely to have, since I’m one of the last half-dozen or so people in the country who doesn’t carry or even own a cellphone.
But I don’t feel the loss of that particular bit of nightmare bait, since I have plenty of others to keep me busy. I still have nightmares about being about to go on stage in a play and realizing I forgot to learn my lines, and it’s been more than fifty years since I’ve been in a play.
While doing my military service, we were practicing patrol/ambush in the woods; my team was patrolling and the sergeant was worried about an ambush, so I told him to phone the enemy to locate them and it worked. The colonel late issued an order that phones had to be off while on duty. This was in ’98.