Again, Again!
JMcAndrew notes: “He’s pretending to be having a medical emergency? A seizure? Allergic Reaction? As a way to entertain his grandchild on video chat? Why?”
Parisi is 64, about the age to have young grandchildren. I’ve done this with my grandchildren, who are always amused, and usually want me to do it again.
JMcAndrew sends this in: “I have to agree with Ditto. It’s ridiculous that they only have 3 birthday candles and her plan was to just hope her 6-year-old wasn’t perceptive enough to notice. Is the family in such financial hardship that they can’t afford some new birthday candles? This is sad more than funny but I like how mad Lois looks here as she cuts the candles in half.”
In honor of the past week’s heat dome:
Comics I Don't Understand 
The weird thing about the Hi and Lois is that Dot should also be turning 6. Did Dot get a cake of her own? How many candles? Or did Lois have six candles and forgot she needed two cakes and so did 3 and 3?
Yes since Ditto and Dot are twins they share a birthday. It’s possible that they are having separate cakes to acknowledge their individuality. I think it’s just as likely that Dik Browne forgot.
Birthday candles: There are a lot of reasons why cutting the candles is the only practical way to get to 6 candles at that point in time. It is a joke wrapped up in a practical solution that not everyone would think of. There doesn’t need to be a 2nd kid around to make the joke.
Maybe Lois is cutting the candles in half as symbolic to how her fertilized embryo split in two when she was impregnated with her twins. (That’s giving this comic way more credit than it deserves)
Aren’t the twins fraternal?
Given that Dot is a girl and Ditto is a boy, I assume they are fraternal. This isn’t one of those strips like Crabgrass where anything can happen.
It could just be a case of forgetting to check how many candles they said and there wasn’t time for her to go out and buy more.
Yes, but with fraternal twins no less than with identicals, they are almost certainly going to have the same birthday. (Leaving room for an exception when the birth[s] bracket a midnight. But we have no idea this applies to Dit and Dotto.)
We don’t have children, but do put candles in something for our birthdays (more recently only for husband’s birthday as I have a major problem with my birthday – it is not the years, it is the date – if anyone wants to know that means let me know).
We used to put a bigger birthday candle per 10 years and smaller one per individual year in a piece of cake. Now he gets one candle in whatever we are eating.
In my family, once you’re past sixteen, you get seven candles, and some of them get lit and some don’t.
At least, that’s what I’ve been agitating for for years and how I do it when they let me do it. For instance, my wife just turned 55, so her candles were -++-+++
If someone makes it to 128 years old, we’ll need an eighth candle, but that won’t be for a while yet.
Of course, the problem is that if you looked at the cake from the other side, you would think she was 118.
Kinda nerdy, but you can use base 2 for birthday candles. Seven candles are generally enough. High order on the left as seen by the birthday kid.
For my birthday, from left to right: lit, unlit, unlit, lit, unlit, lit, unlit.
Did I ever mention that when I am extremely bored in a waiting room, I may tap my fingers in binary counting pattern up to, I guess, 1023. The pattern for the lower 32 in the right hand becomes like a muscle memory (albeit subject to tiring and cramping), and then I pause briefly to adjust the higher bits in the left hand.