Sam Embraces Fatherhood 5/14/21

Being a new father is exhilarating, life-altering and exhausting. But what about if you’re in your 60’s? Luckily, neither John nor I would know, but what follows is what we imagine it would be like. This series is informed by friends of ours who are first time grandparents in their 60’s. It’s pretty much the same experience, except you don’t get to give the kid back to the real mommy and daddy once the weekend is over. In Sam’s case He IS the real daddy. I have a friend who started taking off Fridays so he could help his pregnant daughter by babysitting her toddler. My buddy and his granddaughter had a great routine culminating in lunch at the diner, followed by nap time. Yeah right. Grandpa and his granddaughter would head back to his daughter’s house and lie on couches facing one another. He would put his granddaughter’s favorite blankie around her, and take another blanket for himself. It’s debatable who needed the nap more. Actually, it’s not very debatable at all because each time my friend would feel himself drifting off, his granddaughter would get up off the couch and pull his blanket off, giggling. This went on for a long time before she finally wore out. And by that time, he was toast. That was with one grandchild. Now there are two, and instead of playing man-to-man he was forced to switch to a zone defense.

Our second comic features the other 60-somethings commenting on Sam’s absence from their diner crew. A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, but somehow, someway, he’ll get a babysitter and then life can go back to normal, or at least he can join his buddies at the diner once a week. Is that too much to ask? Not only does a newborn add a lot to life, it also adds many a plot twist to your favorite comic strip. You’ll see them in the coming weeks. Sam got more than what he bargained for but he and Shellie and his buddies at the diner will all figure it out. Or, as the Beatles once famously sang, Ob-la-di, ob-la-da/Life goes on, bra…

See you next week with two new chapters in the continuing saga of Stay at Home Sam.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

New Dad 11/06/2020

Confession: we rented a house in East Hampton for our 30th anniversary in 2014 and never looked back. We’ve done it every year since. Why do I mention that? One it’s a great bribe to get your kids to come and visit you all the time. But the other reason is you see all sorts of sights. From the beautiful…the pristine beaches, spectacular sunsets, the golden light … to the less than beautiful … including older, saggy men with young starlets strolling down said pristine beach. And that leads into today’s comics. Sort of. It’s not that Sam is in his 80’s and Shellie in her 20’s (and believe me, I’ve seen that combo). It’s not even that he has attracted her with his spectacular wealth and power (of which he has neither). It’s just that he married a significantly younger woman. And we thought that might affect the dynamic between Al, Marv and Sam. Primarily because Al’s wife Joanne and Marv’s wife Rachel liked Sam’s first wife and related to her, and they were all part of the same generation. But this new young whippersnapper Shellie, as they say in Brooklyn, fuhgeddaboudit. Except now Shellie (the young whippersnapper is 40, mind you) has had a baby, and this brings Rachel and Joanne around. And it’s going to make Sam’s life far different from his buddys’ lives all over again. First they were the ones who couldn’t stay out late, who had to cancel plans because they couldn’t find a baby sitter, who were always exhausted, but now HE is goingto be the one experiencing all of that when Al and Marv can stay out as late as they want (of course, being in their 60’s that’s not very late, but it’s nice to have options). The first comic also touches on the fact that men are basically babies themselves. Think about it. The woman does all the carrying. Goes through all the nausea. Bares all the labor pain and is the baby’s source of nutrition. And Sam sort of feels bad that all the attention is on the baby and Shellie. We all go through personal growing pains. Sam is about to go through his.

The second comic, on the same topic, touches on the ways in which society has changed and keeps on changing. When we grew up we had chocolate cigarettes and even better big, fat chocolate cigars (only milk chocolate in those days, thank you very much) and who can forget Big League Chew, which took a cancerous product like chewing tobacco and reformulated it as shards of bubble gum. It even came in a resealable pouch just like the real thing. In the past we ran a comic about a grandchild’s horror that Al was still using plastic straws. And so today, we thought one further shock to Sam’s reality was that he no longer could pass out cigars. But hey, organic fruit rollups are almost just as good. Especially when paired with an aged 12-year old scotch. Sam’s life is about to change big time.

Ours, not so much. We’ll see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John