Cagle World

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Anxious parents are no longer allowing their kids to go to slumber parties,” announced a blurb in the August 16 “New York Post.”

Slumber parties are not usually one of the top subjects on my mind in the morning (“Got my keys, got my snack, got my wallet, got a great ‘is your refrigerator running?’ joke to share…”), so I was surprised to learn that 12.3 million parents participate in the #NoSleepovers movement online.

(Boy, I’m old. I remember when Arte Johnson popularized “Blow in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere” on TV’s “Laugh-In.” Today the phrase is “Slap a hashtag on it and I’ll follow you anywhere.” But I digress.)

No, it’s not a COVID thing. Many Gen Xers and millennials simply remember their own childhood indiscretions (“the ankle monitor finally comes off aaaany day now”) and then extrapolate for Technology 2022 and Peer Pressure 2022. Forget sugarplums – visions of internet porn, texted genitalia pics, slasher movies, drug experimentation, hacked Russian missile silos and Caitlyn’s mother’s pervy live-in boyfriend dance through their heads.

Whether you’re entrusting your own heir to a stranger’s care or agreeing to take responsibility for a dozen hellions yourself, a slumber party is a nerve-wracking big deal. (“Just have a fun time and pretend I’m not here. And I’ll pretend the Prince of Darkness isn’t here egging you on…”)

Critics assert that a total ban on sleepovers is “helicopter parenting” taken to the extreme. But helicopter parents are rightly concerned about caffeine-infused youngsters pooling their daredevil ideas. It takes just one “Hey! The gun cabinet is unlocked!” for the helicopter to come plummeting to the ground.

Even if you permit a slumber party but lay down strict rules, you are not going to win any popularity contests with your children. A wee-hours game of Truth or Dare can take some nasty twists. (“I dare you to make long-term plans to put your parents in that nursing home that plays Lawrence Welk music 24-7. Revenge is a dish best served cold…and pureed.”)

Many parents compromise by picking their kids up at 10 p.m. or so, instead of letting them have an all-night gabfest or video-game marathon. The kids make fond memories but aren’t too exhausted to spill the intel. (“So, is the upstairs carpet as hideous as I heard?”)

Call it sour grapes if you must, but I empathize with the #NoSleepovers crowd. Other than camping trips with the Webelos Scouts, I never got invited to sleepovers, and I turned out just fine. I even win the Most Likely to Give Everyone Else the Stink Eye award at class reunions.

One traditionalist pointed out that sleepovers are a “rite of passage” for youngsters. Is there any sociological term more overused and pretentious than “rite of passage”? I missed half the allegedly universal rites of passage, and I’ve still managed to have a mortgage, a colonoscopy and ear hair. Things work out.

Slumber parties are supposedly indispensable for developing necessary social skills and connections that will follow the kids into adulthood. Shades of the Illuminati!

“If you don’t give your blessings for me to marry your daughter, I’ll wallop you with this pillow until the feathers all fly out.”

“Yes, the salary and benefits sound incredible, but I’m afraid I can’t accept the job – unless you let me paint your toenails fuchsia.”

Paint me skeptical.

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

My family made a recent day trip to a neighboring state, so I decided this week’s column should be a tip of the hat to those oases of the interstate highway system, the state welcome centers.

Whether you’re a vacationer, traveling businessperson, truckdriver or zip-across-the-state-line shopper, welcome centers are a great place to “stretch your legs,” “wet your whistle,” “get the lay of the land” and discover other activities that keep the quotation-marks industry trouncing the brackets industry.

Some travelers are truly overjoyed to reach the welcome centers and their facilities. (“State with the world’s largest ball of bellybutton lint, meet the family with the world’s smallest bladders!”)

My son is a brochure collector, so he invariably makes a bee line for the Wall o’ Brochures. These pamphlets can bring you up to speed on regional museums, stage shows, lakes, eateries and shopping destinations. Brochures for state forests are becoming a little scarcer because of printing all the…well, you know. (“Maybe if Charlie Brown’s friends would furiously wave their hands over the remaining trees…”)

If you do a lot of traveling, you may have noticed that some welcome centers are more up to date than others. Here are the three most common signs you’ll find posted at a welcome center that is overdue for refurbishing:

– “Yes, we are a proud sanctuary state for dodo birds.”

– “We are not responsible for any items left unattended in your conveyance, but we cheerfully offer free access to our dueling grounds if pilferage does occur.”

– “If you enjoy your visit, be sure to tell all your friends – unless it’s still just you and Eve. Oh, and check out our fig-leaf emporium.”

Modern welcome centers offer more and more amenities: phone charging stations, free Wi-Fi, short tourism films, et cetera. I’ve heard that one super-competitive state is looking at coin-operated, repurposed electric chairs for giving an attitude adjustment to stubborn dads. (“I’m telling you for the last time — ask for directions!” “Ouch! It’s not about the destination. It’s not about the journey. It’s about letting your old man know you haven’t gone soft. Ouch! Hey, give me a map to the spa! I’ll carry it in my fanny pack!”)

One amenity that will probably not catch on is state-furnished comfort animals. At least not comfort cats – or “welcome centers” would require being renamed “Oh, are you still alive?” centers. (“Glad you brought an extra-large cooler. I’ve got a hairball for it.”)

Some people might think that working at a welcome center is a cushy job, where you can practice your NPR voice. But I have it from reliable sources that such work is a major producer of hypertension. (“Nooo! One more visitor with bumper stickers for the ‘wrong’ college football team! Must…not…accidentally on purpose…give…them…directions…to…Landslide Lane…”)

The beleaguered greeters bone up on knowledge about elevation and precipitation, but usually get questions more like, “So, is there anything I should be boycotting you over?”

Thank those dedicated welcome-center workers, but grant them some privacy. Don’t go imagining what their after-hours homelife is like.

(“Honey, wait until you hear what family-friendly adventure I had with the vending machine. It was a historic event. Ah, I see the panoramic vistas in our back yard need weed-eating this weekend. Right now, I must venture off to the restroom and make memories that will last for a lifetime!”)

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Memories/Light the corners of my mind…” – as sung by Barbra Streisand.

While grocery shopping with my mother in the 1970s, I enjoyed peeking at the “Golden Age” Sunday comics in “Good Old Days” magazine and developing an appreciation of the cartoon antics my father remembered from his boyhood.

In the early 1980s, as part of a school magazine fundraiser, my (then-future) wife wheedled her grandfather into purchasing a much-enjoyed subscription to “Reminisce.”

I am overjoyed that these two magazines are still around to remind a powder keg of a nation about simpler times. Simpler times when the moon might still be made of green cheese and a man’s word was his bond and hips knew their place and kids would play outdoors until dark, turning over every rock to find bugs (as opposed to finding new pronouns).

Both periodicals are chock-full of articles about how swell the country used to be for its citizens. Granted, the theme issues spotlighting Black gay communists with polio are a little thinner than most, but surely that’s the exception that proves the rule.

These magazines are priceless time capsules, and not the disturbing kind of metal time capsule that gets buried and forgotten. (“Stop digging. I think we’ve finally found where Grandpa buried the ti—no, wait! It’s just Mittens. Ewwww! Junior, I thought I told you to…”)

Obviously, these magazines are a thoughtful gift for seniors, whether they are confined to a nursing home bed or experiencing an active lifestyle of tennis and travel.

Retirees from coast to coast can all enjoy reading about station wagon vacations, Sinclair gas stations, Lucy and Ethel, Dick and Jane books, the old swimming hole, poodle skirts, drive-in theaters, snapping green beans with grandma and figuring out how one could eventually produce exactly 2-point-5 children. (“Do you like me? Check yes or no and provide references for how good you are with fractions.”)

Don’t stop there. Folks a generation younger can use the recollections from their parents’ peers to modify their own mid-life crisis. (“Who needs a sports car and a trophy wife??? I’m cashing in my retirement account early and stocking up on asbestos!”)

I’m not finished. The nostalgia magazines are especially appropriate for young people who respond with rolled eyes and a dismissive “I don’t even know what that is” anytime an elder uses perfectly legitimate words such as “Fonzie,” “encyclopedia salesman,” “phone book” or “house call.”

Hand the youngsters a stack of magazines and then play dumb yourself. (“Co-sign a loan? What is this ‘co-sign’ terminology? Move into the basement? You kids and your newfangled slang!”)

Of course, with the passage of time, the original readership of the magazines passed away (“Be sure to mark the grave this time, Junior!”), so the emphasis has slowly shifted from the Gay 90s and Roaring 20s to the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers.

Following that pattern, someday the readers will think of the 2020s as “the good old days.” I shudder to think of the articles.

“That time the house caught on fire, and I had to choose between my knitted mask and my participation ribbon!”

“My most embarrassing childhood moment: when the doctor cut my umbilical cord before I could start recording for my TikTok audience!”

*Sigh*

The magazine rack: be there or be square. Because Mittens would have wanted it that way.

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.” Danny’s weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate.

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

According to the National Gardening Association, the number of households growing their own vegetables, fruit and other foods has tripled since 2008.

(Coincidentally, the number of households stocking up on earplugs to keep from hearing neighbors brag about growing their own vegetables, fruit and other foods has also tripled since 2008. But I digress.)

Since last year alone, multi-family community gardens have increased by 22 percent. Such gardens would spread even faster if organizers could weed out the “participants” who try to abuse the division of labor.

For instance, the “researcher” who helps out by lying all day on his sofa, analyzing the 1978 film “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” (“Hey, Mike – I’m going to need another bucket of that locally produced popcorn, with locally produced hot butter. Chop chop!”)

In times of high inflation, a home garden can be a lifesaver. Financially strapped consumers can save money while also eating a more nutrient-rich diet. Consequently, they will have the funds and energy to go out campaigning for the politicians who got them into times of high inflation to start with! Some people’s gourds have been out in the sun too long, if you catch my drift.

Today’s gardeners love communing with Mother Nature – assuming Mother Nature recognizes them through all the insect repellent and SPF bazillion sunscreen.

Neophyte gardeners revel in the convenience of walking right out and plucking an edible from the vine – after first scheduling an emergency visit with the chiropractor. (“I’m tired, doc, but it’s a good…golly, are those x-rays even human???”)

Gardeners take pride in doing their small share to reduce their carbon footprint. Or is it that they take pride in doing their small share to use soil stolen from Indigenous peoples to cut migratory farm laborers, truck drivers and grocers out of a job? I always get those confused.

Today’s gardens hearken back to the patriotic Victory Gardens of World War II. But our modern culture can reduce their status to more of a “Waving the White Flag” garden. (“Okay, Junior, but you have to promise to help shell these nutritious peas after I drive you around the corner and buy you a 64-ounce Medium Gulp. And no, there’s not an app for shelling peas.”)

Sometimes gardeners get a little too emotionally involved in their horticultural hobby. They aren’t satisfied to let professionals 2,000 miles away tend to pesticides. No, they insist on going the “This time it’s personal!” route when dispatching aphids, worms and beetles. If these people load me down with a two-year supply of rutabagas, I thank them profusely and walk backwards all the way to the car.

Believe me, I understand about dissatisfaction with cardboard-adjacent vegetables that are engineered for transportation and storage. On the other hand, gardeners sometimes get on their high horse and twist everyday words into strong pejoratives. (“Yes, my husband is a vegetable since his accident, but at least he’s not a store-bought vegetable!”)

It will be interesting to see how many gardeners are in it for the long haul (pardon my French, logistics-phobes) and how many are just dabbling with a new pastime in the post-pandemic era.

Overheard at a dinner party: “I am serious. This is not a fad. I don’t do fads. Now pass the brussels sprouts and help yourself to more of the Tide Pods souffle and Beanie Babies casserole.”

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.” Danny’s weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate.

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

According to the Washington Examiner, 2022 has handed New York City an alarming spike in citizen complaints about outdoor odors.

(“I hope you appreciate me doing my civic duty. It’s not easy to use a cellphone to make a 311 call and publicly urinate at the same time. Oops…sorry, graffiti.”)

Mayor Eric Adams has promised a new garbage bin program, brand-new street sweepers and additional restrooms, but I wonder how committed he truly is. Adams is on the record opining that the main thing he smells permeating the city is marijuana. Actual quote: “It’s like everybody’s smoking a joint now.”

Wow. That’s not exactly the sort of folksy assessment one would expect from the mayor of Mayberry. Of course, times change. (“Welcome to Mayberry. Otis Campbell will not be riding a cow today, but I did see him purchasing a saddle for a giant rat. Guard your pizza.”)

The Big Apple’s plight has made me curious about your own corner of the world. How does your city, town or hamlet rank in the aroma area? Would the air delight the nostrils of tourists, or would it make their olfactory cells migrate down to their feet? (“Not thrilled with the bunions, but at least there are Odor Eaters down here.”)

Most of us take immense pride in our hometowns and would vehemently object if an outsider offered a critique. (“Oh, yeah? Those are fighting words, buddy! Those are fighting…*wheeze* *hack* *cough*…”)

Municipal leaders are loathe to make public statements about local shortcomings, so they employ more subtle maneuvers. That’s why the city boasting the World’s Largest Ball of Double-Sided Tape morphed into the city boasting the World’s Largest Can of Febreze without any fanfare.

Communities that do acknowledge chronic odor problems have their own unique backstory. Maybe it’s inadequate storm drains, improperly disposed toxic chemicals, a sulfur-laced water supply, agricultural runoff, the perfect storm of 500 uncles simultaneously perpetrating the “pull my finger” gag or something else.

Let’s not forget the quaint Hallmark movie villages. (“The series about the perky crash-test-dummy-turned-sleuth got canceled, and we forgot to tell the corpse actors they could go home. Ewww…”)

My hometown had a stockyard right off the public square when I was growing up, and the county trustee recently jogged my memories about the noxious smoke that used to waft from the old city dump; but I don’t really have a lot of negative observations about current conditions.

On the other hand, after nearly 30 years, my wife still complains about the overpowering smell of empty liquor bottles set out for garbage collection on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. (Hey, there’s a reason no song has ever started “There is a house in New Orleans/It reeks of pumpkin spice…”)

Nor has she forgotten the largescale gospel singing event that was marred by the presence of a ripe cow carcass on a nearby farm. The incident helped me brainstorm several new hymns, including “What A Friend We Have in Clothespins,” “When the Saints Go Staggering In” and “Swing Low, Sweet Airplane Oxygen Mask.”

Let me know if your community stinks (and not in the “there’s nothing to do in this one-horse town and one family runs everything” sense). I want air-quality reports!

But if you’re reading this in The City That Never Sleeps, please wipe off the Cheetos dust first.

“It’s like everybody’s got the munchies now.”
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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Trust me when I declare that I am not competing for sympathy against folks suffering from cancer, blocked arteries, diabetes or other serious ailments.

I do nonetheless think that my body is out to get me.

And not just with the chronic aches, pains and wrinkles that accompany normal aging. No, my body perpetrates fiendishly clever assaults on my comfort and dignity. (Misery loves company, so you may be yelling, “Too much information!” as this essay assaults your own comfort and dignity.)

I am most keenly aware of the wee-wee complications. I can sleep through the night (thank you very much), but during my waking hours, I hear from my urinary tract more often that I hear from the extended-warranty pitchman. I wish I could be the bladder whisperer, but I’m more the bladder “will you shut the heck up and stop harassing me????” type.

Seriously, even if I’ve gotten preoccupied and skimped on hydration, I apparently start absorbing moisture from house plants, puddles, horse troughs and the like. On a really bad day, the technicians at Hoover Dam have learned to mutter, “No, it’s not a leak. Tyree’s at it again.”

Alas, my gastrointestinal system gets in on the act, too. Regardless of how well I’ve handled my diet, in the back of my mind I can hear Chubby Checker on heavy rotation. (“Let’s go again like we did last hour/Let’s go again, like you trained your rear…”)

Dressing in a hurry always brings surprises. Hangnails that were nonexistent 30 seconds ago suddenly snag delicate fabrics. Instead of being recognized as a sharp-dressed man, I am dismissed as someone who lost a tussle with Zorro.

The more I need to meet a project deadline, the more my nose spontaneously conjures up distracting postnasal drip. Granted, I am in good company. The full Archimedes quote was “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and a big honkin’ box of Kleenex, and I shall move the world.”

On a related note, I dread jostling anyone in a crowd. As a super-polite citizen, I want to issue a robust “Excuse me, please.” But I invariably have just enough phlegm in my throat to turn it into a wimpy guttural response. Countless strangers have inched away from me while conjecturing, “Maybe if the poor schmuck discovers fire, he can roast himself a mastodon.”

I truly despise being double-teamed. Sometimes my inner child colludes with my body. I can’t drive within 25 miles of a cemetery without my body demanding to know, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Why is my body so relentless in bombarding me with missteps, coughs and eye boogers??? After all I’ve done for it!

I exercise… my option for choicest spot on the sofa, but exercise, nonetheless. I get at least six-ish hours of sleep per night on my good-as-new mattress. That’s more than the previous owners got, with all that squawking about, “The British are coming! The British are coming!”

Finally, I am careful about what foods I put into my bodily temple. I don’t exactly adhere to the Food Pyramid, but I have discovered the rival Food Sphinx. I’ve even come close to solving the Food Sphinx’s riddle: “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and deep-fries everything that is arguably edible in the evening?”

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Believe it or not, my wife and I haven’t attended a concert in nearly 25 years.

(Elton John’s January 1998 appearance at Nashville Arena was our last outing.)

I realize such an admission strikes a discordant note with most “normal” people. “Don’t you want to be able to say that you saw (fill in the blank) in person?”

Get serious. Most of the applause at concerts is lavished upon songs celebrating substance abuse, promiscuity, adultery or anti-establishment violence. If you can approve the other naughtiness, why not tell a few white lies about concerts you didn’t, technically, attend? (“Yeah, Garth called us onstage. But the CIA made the TV crews delete the video; so, alas, there’s no record of it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”)

The major obstacle to our attending more concerts is that my wife is particularly bothered by loud noises and flashing lights. Granted, this meshes with the “more decibels, please” concert mantra “I… wanna rock and roll all night, and suffer migraines every day.” Music is supposed to change the world, not rewrite your genetic code.

I realize we could bring earplugs and dark glasses, but that’s like dining at a 5-star restaurant after laminating your taste buds.

Things are looking up for us financially, but concert tickets have traditionally been a low-priority budget item. More power to the people who think nothing of enriching ticket scalpers, but I would lose sleep over it. Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, but it doesn’t cut much ice with debt collectors.

I doubt I am the only person who dreads the hassle of concerts: tickets, hidden fees, traffic, parking, security, etc. If you do enjoy hassles, an economical compromise might involve staying home and putting together a backyard swing set (“some assembly required”) while your spouse bites the head off a bat.

It’s especially hard to get enthusiastic about bands that have undergone one lineup change too many. You know, where the backup cowbell player has somehow obtained ownership of the name and is the only remaining original element. Here’s an idea: I could just ship my baby teeth to the venue and say I attended.

Spare me the legendary artists who attempt staying relevant. (“I know you came to hear a selection of my 56 chart-topping hits, but first here’s a new 45-minute stripped-down dirge about my angst over the banking system in Lithuania.”)

Two down-to-earth guys (my father and my wife’s grandfather) influenced us not to get too starstruck. I enjoy the radio and my MP3 files without pursuing closer celebrity relationships. I mean, I appreciate the work of the time-and-temperature lady on the phone, but I don’t feel obligated to see her in an arena or buy the T-shirt. (“Forecast: tomorrow you’ll feel like a total fool. But with the heat index, you’ll feel like a 110 percent fool.”)

I do get wistful about a handful of missed opportunities (I wouldn’t mind seeing Barry Manilow perform someday), but then I get on with my life.

Regrets? I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through…

Hey, that reminds me. Did I ever tell you about the time Elvis and Sinatra regaled me with stories of getting John Philip Sousa so wasted he threw up in 76 trombones? Pull up a souvenir seat cushion…

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

The front page of the July 8, 1947 “Roswell (New Mexico) Daily Record” seized the American imagination with the headline “RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field) Captures Flying Saucer.”

That announcement added fuel to the saucer craze of summer 1947 (“Keep your raccoon coats, grandpa – we’ve got Martians!”). But to the disappointment of believers in extraterrestrial visitors, the military issued a retraction the very next day, asserting that the debris found by rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel was merely a run-of-the-mill weather balloon. (“Nothing to see here. Move along…but not like those slimy little…never mind!”)

I’m not implying anything, but Uncle Sam has historically displayed a penchant for playing the “weather balloon” gambit when handling unpleasantries. (“You claim we signed a treaty, Sitting Bull? No, no, that was a weather balloon we signed, silly!”)

Most people have forgotten, but the military also demanded several other “Daily Record” retractions that week, thus explaining the newspaper’s abrupt discovery that Wimpy was really a vegetarian and Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio was in fact America’s premier ballerina.

Despite some initial objections from area residents, “the Roswell incident” was mostly ignored until the late 1970s, when UFO researchers thrust the clarification-slash-coverup back into the public consciousness.

Even with all the paranormal books and podcasts on the market, the average citizen is fuzzy concerning exactly what conspiracy theorists claim happened near Roswell. People often mention child-size corpses, Area 51 and Men in Black when pressed to venture an opinion about Roswell, but those elements were not part of the original report. Lots of different things get mixed up in our memories over the span of more than seven decades.

Don’t believe me? One enthusiast was getting all worked up over an alleged Roswell crash survivor who – over the course of years of staying undercover – heroically saved Timmy from the well, tracked down the one-armed man, became stepfather of three very lovely girls and enjoyed some degree of dignity until one Cosmo Kramer dropped a Junior Mint into his body cavity during his alien autopsy.

In the 1990s, the Pentagon tried to drive a stake through the heart of the controversy by changing its story again, to confess that what crashed was really a Cold War device used to spy on potential Soviet nuclear tests. Oh, scampish Pentagon – where greetings of “Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” get met with “I’ll have that declassified for you in 50 years.”

But the matter refuses to die, because of the steady drip of unearthed documents, deathbed confessions, Magic 8-Ball revelations, etc.

Proper vetting is still needed for some of the more sensational bombshells. Like the purported contraband singed license plate that declares, “I brake for freakishly tall, pink-skinned oxygen-breathers.” Or the diary with an entry about a rancher listening to his shortwave radio one night in July 1947 and hearing a garbled message that sounded something like “Hold on to your tentacles! Mom and dad are going to be so (perturbed)!”

I realize I’m abdicating my role as an influencer by not digging more deeply into this mystery myself. It fascinates me, but I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions and to decide how to commemorate the 75th anniversary of…whatever.

Yeah, I know “the truth is out there”; but my lovely wife, the air conditioner and episodes of the CW’s “Roswell, New Mexico” are in here!

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

You’ve probably seen the screaming headlines about a Gallup survey revealing that Americans’ belief in God has hit an all-time low.

I’m not here to quibble with the atheists, agnostics and alternate-spirituality practitioners who answered the survey.

No, I’m just flummoxed by subsets of the supposedly pro-God respondents.

You see, the survey also branched into questions about prayer. Of the 81% of Americans who conceded still believing in God, 28 percent said He hears prayers but cannot intervene, while 11 percent think God neither hears nor intervenes.

Excuse me?

Why wouldn’t the Supreme Being be able to intervene? Restraining order? Expired warranty?

Seriously, how do you reduce the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to a bureaucrat muttering, “Next window”?

I can’t accept that God created the entire universe and then accidentally locked Himself out of it, like a bleary-eyed commuter who left his keys on the kitchen table. (“Hey, somebody let me back in! I left Vesuvius and Krakatoa turned on, and even the continents are starting to drift! Stupid, stupid. I could just smite myself!”)

And what’s this about not even hearing prayers? An ACLU lawyer on the top bleacher can hear a coach praying on the field after a game, but the Creator of the miraculous human ear is left out of the loop??? Just how few bars of service do they get in the heavenly realm? Does God still have tinnitus from the Big Bang?

What kind of definition are these jokers using for a “capital G” God, anyway? For me, omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence pretty much go with the territory. I’d hate to see how these characters define other words. (“My uncle is a police officer. He doesn’t belong to the police department or carry a badge or deal with public safety or appreciate doughnuts, but he’s a police officer.”)

I suspect many of the folks casting aspersions on the efficacy of prayer experience nagging doubts because of the trite “Why is there evil in the universe?” question. That query has been definitively answered by approximately 13 gazillion sermons and essays, but the respondents didn’t notice because they were too busy asking, “And why doesn’t glue taste as good as it did when I was a kid?”

I’m sorry that some people just can’t be satisfied. (“My nana died peacefully in her sleep at age 107 – instead of dying while watching ‘Wheel of Fortune’ at age 108. That proves God doesn’t care about us!”)

I don’t like the implications of prayers going unheard. Did the Pilgrims waste their breath with their Thanksgiving gratitude? Was it really Bigfoot who just wandered along and rescued Daniel from the lions’ den? Don’t supplicants pouring their hearts out to God deserve more than a recording of Strother Martin explaining, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”?

Would you ruin your child’s bedtime prayer by warning, “If you die before you wake, we’re calling Ghostbusters”?

Wonder why people in crisis are suddenly so dismissive about offers of “thoughts and prayers”? Maybe not enough thought goes into the subject of prayers!

Faith is faith, but it should be internally consistent.

Perhaps straddling the fence and worshiping a supreme-ish being aren’t the answers mankind needs.

(“Yikes! My legs went to sleep while straddling the fence, and here come the locusts! Please, God, I have enough light; let there be citronella!”)

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

“Did you know that your rear passenger tire is a little underinflated?”

I harbor a grudging appreciation for a potentially life-saving hint like that.

I mean, it makes me feel like an idiot that I can stare at the tire, repeatedly kick it and still need a gauge to verify what someone standing 150 yards away in a hailstorm recognized immediately. But I do swallow my pride and express gratitude.

Not so much with “Hey, you got your ears lowered” and other impertinent observations.

I suffered more than my share of insecurities and embarrassments during school, so I currently lead a life of quiet desperation. I just want to stay under the radar and survive another day without umpteen people “helpfully” pointing out my every physical blemish or fashion faux pas.

“I couldn’t help but notice” is the icebreaker for many a would-be benefactor. Yes, if you’re utilizing a ladder, spotlight, binoculars and bloodhound to scrutinize someone, you probably can’t help but notice.

Sure, if a 12-pack of Charmin is following me from the public restroom, stage an intervention. But I consider it a microaggression to be notified about every almost-untied shoestring, elbow smudge or crammed-in-a-boot pants leg that disrupts someone’s OCD worldview.

It’s particularly galling when do-gooders possess a blind spot for precancerous growths and tell-tale heart attack indicators but catalog (and gossip about) every dangling booger they’ve ever witnessed.

A simple “good morning” is sufficient. I don’t require “The current temperature is 72 degrees and with the Slob Index, that will feel like…”

Listen to my joke, news flash or cry for help. Appreciate my smile. Interpret my hand gestures. But focus. Don’t try multitasking by simultaneously scanning everything about my hair, clothing, body and aura, in the equivalent of an 18-point-inspection oil change.

I’m especially creeped out by observations about the real or imagined status of my pants zipper. Seriously, if you “couldn’t help but notice” my fly-adjacent body zone, keep the ladder, spotlight, binoculars, bloodhound and candy – I’m still not getting in your van.

Granted, people sporting windchime earrings or head-to-toe tattoos are probably fishing for comments; but most of us who are finally experiencing a good day aren’t in the market for some clown to sympathize, “Hey, you look tired, buddy. And your parade looks soggy, too.”

If you want to think positively, convince yourself that your friends, family and acquaintances are just gilding the lily and stroking your ego when they deliver an unsolicited pointer. More realistically, they probably think, “He’s a Dumpster fire, but at least I can toast a few marshmallows.”

My anxieties constitute a double whammy. On the one hand, I worry that my slightly askew shirt collar will sully the family name for eternity. (Didn’t Dante Alighieri scribble something about “Abandon all hope, ye who miss buttoning a button”?)

On the other hand, I ponder whether “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” is the guiding force of the universe. Is there some social compact that requires each of us to play “color-code the armpit hairs” with everyone we encounter?

No. I refuse to believe that.

Someday we’ll outgrow the darting eyes and the snap judgments. Someday “mind your own bee’s wax” will be our guiding principle.

“I couldn’t help but notice, your bee’s wax is dusted with the sort of pollen that went out of style last year…”

*Sigh*

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”