20 Comments

  1. That’s just weird. I looks like the ghost is confused because the doors look nearly identical. But the idea (IMO) is that only a ghost can tell the difference in the two doors. The ghosts on the doors might be obviously male and female to a ghost’s eyes. The word “Boo” might mean something different on each door (the same way “I am Groot” sounds the same to us).

    But none of the above works, because the character shown is a ghost, and should be able to tell the difference. It might have made more sense in a “Coco” type situation, where one character is a disguised human trying to navigate a world of the undead.

  2. My first thought was that the “oo” in “Boo” was playing on the (European) custom of numbering the hall bathrooms on each floor with “00“, but that does not produce a viable joke, and in any case Lonnie Millsap is American, not British.

    P.S. If this were a “Bob Weber” comic, the joke would be that the ghost is afraid of making a “boo-boo” in his sheet.

  3. I’m of the exact opposite opinion as Xine. The ghost can’t tell the difference and doesn’t want to go into the wrong restroom.

  4. I agree with Andrew Millar.

    Sometimes a venue will choose clever thematic ways of differentiating the restrooms. Sometimes the result is confusing.

    For example, perhaps a Scottish-themed pub might indicate the lassies with a silhouette wearing a skirt; and the laddies are denoted by a silhouette wearing a kilt.

  5. The ghost can’t tell which restroom is the right one for its type. Possibly relating to restaurants or bars with themes, which have difficult to understand restroom signs. Pointers and setters. Foxes and hounds. Damas y Herrs. Ladies and tigers. Pomp and circumstance. Prizes and Billy goats. Pearls and swine. Alices and Hatters. Beauty and beast. Coconuts and oysters.

    A man once had to paint a sign for the restroom hallway in an international-themed restaurant, simply “Restrooms” in multiple languages; French, Spanish, German, Italian, et cetera. When he came to Chinese, he didn’t know what the Chinese character looked like so he just copied a Chinese symbol from a scrap of newspaper, figuring no one would actually know whether or not it was the right symbol. A Chinese lady Walked up, saw the sign, and started laughing. “Do you know what that symbol means? It’s curiously appropriate. That symbol means”Happiness”!

  6. Along the lines of Andrew Millar’s comment: The cartoon trope is that ghosts look like floating sheets- there is no distinguishing between deceased men and women. To the ghost in question though, there must be a practical difference bwteen men and women ghosts.

    The “Boo” label has me stumped, though.

  7. Kilby (4): When I read “Lonnie Millsap,” I thought that was the name of a country-western singer and wondered what that had to do with the comic. Only after a search did I realize it was this cartoonist’s name. (It turns out I was confusing it with Ronnie Milsap.) I apologize to both of them.

  8. @ Boise Ed – No need to apologize. When I first tried to find Lonnie’s website, I mispelled the last name (one L instead of two), and the search engines were all 100% sure that I was looking for Ronnie. I needn’t have bothered, the cartoons haven’t been updated in over two years, and although the top banner displays the GoComics address, it doesn’t even bother to link to it.

  9. Downpuppy, which Grendel do you mean? Do you remember the retelling by oddball novelist John Gardner?

  10. Grendel’s Den, a basement dive bar in Harvard Square. I thought it had closed, but turns out they’d just cleaned it up a bit.

  11. Not too far from Grendel’s Den, near Kenmore Square, I remember a tiny sandwich shop with two restrooms, one labeled “People” and the other labeled “Humans”. Each was only big enough for one person so it really didn’t matter who used which.

  12. I go with the ghost is not sure which to use.

    Now what is possible on the building’s end of things is that they have 2 single bathrooms and they are saying that ghosts can use either one – which I would think they would know that it was okay to use either one – but it was not ok if they were a witch or something else.

    Husband would tell you that I have special power – he says that I can walk into almost any restaurant, store etc. and instantly know where to run to get to the bathroom. 🙂

    (One advantage of traveling in our tiny RV – aka Chevy van conversion – is always having a bathroom to use. )

  13. Oddly just a day later came across this photo. Is this at the place referenced? It was in a comment on a posting about Kierkegaard@

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