Polite Dissent

16 Responses to “ Monday PSA: Safety First — All Year! ”

1. Jon
   January 5th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
   

   Why does Johnny’s mother smile when he falls down?

2. Dean
   January 5th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
   

   Because Johnny’s mother is trying to kill him as well. Who do you think put the skate there?
   ‘Resolution #2: I am no longer safe in my home. Buy a gun.’

3. Jessica
   January 6th, 2010 at 2:07 am
   

   Oh, Johnny’s mother, I feel your pain, one mom to another. You’ve told him every single day for years to put his goddamn toys and tools away, and does he? No. Never. So here’s my advice- let him break his stupid neck. You’ve got another kid. A better kid! Concentrate on “Sis,” and let Johnny’s horrible maiming-by-rake be an object lesson to her.

   (NB- Both of my kids are alive and unmaimed. And pick up their toys.)

4. lilacsigil
   January 6th, 2010 at 2:34 am
   

   Where in the U.S. would Johnny be raking up leaves in January?

   Anywhere there’s eucalyptus trees? I rake them up all year in Australia, and in Summer they drop branches, too!

5. Aaron
   January 6th, 2010 at 8:22 am
   

   I’m curious why Johnny is acting like making new year’s resolutions is a critical act requiring him to drop everything and run to do it. Also, were leaf rakes not invented yet? Why is he using a garden rake?

6. Sean Duggan
   January 6th, 2010 at 8:45 am
   

   Although, it is worth noting that it doesn’t take much of a fall to kill a person. All that needs to happen is to land at just the wrong angle, or against the wrong object. I definitely agree that the soap in the middle of the floor is more than a tad suspicious. A bit sloppy too. The floor of the bathtub is much more efficient. Not only is there a smaller space and therefore more likelihood of putting a foot on it, but it’s almost always damp and therefore slippery, there are plenty of surfaces to strike one’s head against, and there may even be standing water in which they can drown even if they only knock themselves unconscious.

7. Bryan L
   January 6th, 2010 at 8:55 am
   

   Judging by the fact that Johnny’s in a t-shirt, his house has sliding glass doors, and the foliage is largely green, I would place him here in Florida. We can pretty much rake leaves all year round, depending on the trees in your yard. Mostly I just keep the grass-catcher on the lawnmower and “vacuum” them up. It’s easier and faster.

   And yes, Mom’s got a substantial life insurance policy on Johnny, and Sis is planning the hit. Even if she’s caught, she can’t be prosecuted as a adult.

8. Will
   January 6th, 2010 at 9:57 am
   

   @Bryan If your Florida assumption is correct (which makes a lot of sense), Sis should be careful because they try minors as adults all the time for first degree murder. Also, if mom is in on it, we got ourselves a nice conspiracy. I can’t wait for this Law & Order episode ripped from the headlines (or a 1960s comic PSA).

9. Casanova Frankenstein
   January 6th, 2010 at 9:59 am
   

   Oak leaves! Although if he had any sense he’d have done it when they fell three months ago.

   There still being leaves on one of the trees, I expect that’s a beech of some kind, but I’m still at a loss to explain why he’s wearing so little. And of course, why he’s such a strangely muscular child.

10. Bryan L
    January 6th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
    

    @ Will: Good point. They did try a 12-year-old as an adult a few years ago for killing another child (might have been a sibling — memory fails). But Sis looks so young, I doubt they’d try that with her, though you never know when you’ll get a headline-hunting DA. Yes, a Law & Order pitch script is definitely in order …

11. Harvey
    January 6th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
    

    1.) Johnny and his family are Orthodox, and recognize the Gregorian Calendar. That would put their New Year in September.

    2.) As shown in panel 2, Johnny is a klutz. At some point in his past he injured his brain and lost the ability to form memories. He needs to write down his resolutions or else he will forget them.

    3.) Off-panel. It wasn’t necessary for the plot or pacing of the comic, so an editorial decision was made to cut it out of the scene. It is left to the audience to assume its existence.

    4.) The soap was a desperate attempt by the sister to restore Johnny’s memories. As a fan of television sitcoms, she knows that the way to cure amnesia is an even number of severe brain traumas.

12. Allen Varney
    January 6th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
    

    The live oak trees here in Austin, Texas just started dropping their leaves in mid-December, a few weeks ago, and there are still plenty of trees in this neighborhood in full leaf. That’s as I write; a cold front is due in about ten hours!

13. Jeff R.
    January 8th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
    

    Florida means it has to be a CSI, not a Law and Order. Which is all to the good, since you get more TMI-cam reconstructions of possible scenarious of how Johnny’s head got caved in…

14. Jesse
    January 10th, 2010 at 2:32 am
    

    CSI would also mean more one-liners from David Caruso.

    “Looks like somebody…
    *removes or puts on sunglasses*
    ….dropped the soap.”

15. Chris
    January 12th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
    

    No doubt Johnny has been putting off making his New Years Resolutions for 10 months. So it’s really October in this comic.

16. EL
    January 13th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
    

    @ Aaron: I was wondering the same thing about the rake.

    After living in MS for several years, I would suspect that he could be living there. We quite often did not rake until late November or December. January was a bit late, but as long as the leaves didn’t get wet, we could have raked then.

    As an old fogey, when I was younger, you were supposed to write your resolutions down. This was so that you couldn’t weasel out of them.

    I hate CSI Miami (mostly because of Caruso), but would watch if this came up — post a comment and let me know. . .

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