Cagle World

Now that my eldest and middle daughters are off at college dashing my prospects for retirement, and my youngest daughter has started navigating the pubescent challenges of high school, I can turn to more important matters – namely, pants.

Yes, we’ve reached the time of year when, to the relief of my friends and family, I’m back to wearing trousers on a semi-regular basis. And since I hadn’t updated my professional wardrobe since the second Bush administration, I recently decided to throw caution (and several pair of worn-out pleated slacks with expandable waistband) to the wind and start over.

Unfortunately for a dude who is steadily losing the dad-bod battle, though, seemingly every men’s fashion designer now feels compelled to trigger me by advertising their garments as “slim fitting.” I haven’t squeezed my girth into anything described as “slim” since I was five years old with a Kool-Aid mustache and wearing Toughskins jeans from Sears.

Fortunately for me, when I was scrolling through Facebook looking at back-to-school pics of teenagers wishing their parents would leave them alone, I came across a well-placed ad for men’s pants that seemed to read my mind (or detect my search history after I had previously spent an hour googling, “pants that will make me look cooler than I am”).

These pants hilariously promise to be “butt molding” (whatever that means) and provide plenty of “breathing space” for other regions thanks to a “diamond-shaped gusset.” They also claim to repel stains, stretch without bagging with “new-age fabric,” somehow keep me from stinking due to drying technology and, most importantly, boost my confidence. (Did I mention the butt molding?)

“So, what is this dark magic?” I wondered. “Are these pants for real, or is this another disappointing marketing ploy for a second-rate product–like Sea-Monkeys. (I mean, the females don’t even wear lipstick like in the picture.)”

Determined to suppress my skepticism, I reached for one of my beleaguered credit cards and ordered a pair. They weren’t cheap, but how could I pass up the opportunity for what the advertising called a “cheeky upgrade” to my wardrobe that would also “prevent bulging”?

I’m happy to say that the pants fit perfectly and looked decent, so I ordered three more pairs. I can’t vouch for the enhancements to my caboose since I can’t see back there, but I figure it couldn’t look any worse.

To complete the ensemble, I found some stretchy button-up shirts on summer clearance that are meant to be worn untucked and are described by the designer as “timeless and elegant–for the modern man.” The modern man isn’t named, but I’m guessing he spends a lot less time eating chips and salsa than I do.

What I like most about these shirts, other than their heavily discounted price, is that the tighter sleeves offer the illusion of actual muscles, and the body of the shirt disguises the fact that my abdomen resembles a misshapen Bartlett pear.

On my first day back to work after our summer vacation, my sweet wife told me I looked “good,” which is probably her way of saying that I don’t look quite as much like a bloated thrift-store mannequin. My youngest daughter just peered suspiciously over the top of her glasses and remained silent – thankfully.

I must admit that my fresh wardrobe has made me feel better physically and emotionally. And if you ever find yourself walking behind me, I apologize in advance for any distractions caused by the “butt molding.”

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

In recent days, the hormonal distribution in my household has become slightly more balanced as two of my three teenage daughters and several lines of credit are now off attending college. This means that when I’m at home, I only receive the contemptuous side-eye from my wife, my youngest daughter, two female dogs and a female cat anytime I produce even the most innocent of bodily noises.

Yes, my happy-go-lucky middle daughter has left the nest – with a trail of glitter, jewelry beads and other expensive craft supplies in her wake. Things around here will be a lot quieter without her, and probably a heck of a lot less fun.

I’ve often said that my middle daughter is the marshmallow center of the sibling Moon Pie, and we’ll definitely miss her infectious silliness, which has occasionally involved wearing a pair of underwear or one of our pets as a hat.

Now that she’s gone to college, I’ll be missing the daughter I can’t sit beside (or even look at) during church services, weddings, nice dinners or any other polite company without risking an eruption of giggle snorts or beverages spewing out of our nostrils.

This is the daughter who once aspired to be a professional shopper, and when we asked for whom she planned to shop, she exclaimed that she would be shopping for herself – of course. Over the years, she has become an expert in this line of work.

This is also the daughter whose insides, by now, have probably mutated into a viscous mass of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. In fact, whenever we ran out of the candy, she could be found at any given hour of the day or night lurking in our kitchen pantry–committing culinary atrocities against a large jar of creamy Jif and a jumbo bag of Nestle Tollhouse Milk Chocolate Morsels.

This is the daughter who, over the years, has attempted to transform our home into an unlicensed exotic petting zoo. Incidentally, by housing numerous hedgehogs, fancy mice, hermit crabs, hamsters, dogs and cats, I’ve developed well-honed skills in the field of droppings-management. (If I could only find some way to turn it into a side gig.)

When she wasn’t trying to convince me to blow a couple of C-notes on another pet whose poop I would get to scoop, this is the daughter who had a habit of going to the ophthalmologist to have a variety of foreign objects plucked out of her eyeballs. I don’t think she ever got a hedgehog lodged in there, but I’m sure she considered it.

And speaking of pet droppings, since puberty hit and ruined everything, this is the daughter who has taken every possible opportunity to invite various hairy-legged species of teenage boys (usually in desperate need of a haircut) for awkward meetings with me so that I could evaluate them and offer to show them my collection of Bibles and body bags. Fortunately, when she left for college, she managed to avoid packing a take-along boyfriend in her laundry hamper – I think.

I desperately love all three of my daughters. They are all delightfully different, and I’ve learned to annoy each of them according to their own unique personalities.

With my eldest and most expensive daughter entering her sophomore year of spending my life savings, and my middle daughter spreading her sunshine as a college freshman, my youngest teenage daughter will now be our honorary “only child.” And although she tends to be stoic and quiet, she does have a silly streak, so we’ll do our best to commemorate her middle sister from time to time by spewing beverages out of our nostrils and wearing our underwear as a hat.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

East Texas is hot, and not in the way you compliment your wife when she’s mad at you for performing an epic cannonball while she’s lounging by the pool with her laptop.

For the past few weeks, Texas (and much of the world) has been suffering through a distressing phenomenon known as summer – that time of year when we all remember what it’s like being toddlers walking around with drenched undergarments.

I realize that my opinion may seem blasphemous to those who enjoy a good lower-body heat rash, but I’ve always preferred the fall and winter over summer. Yes, I get bushy-tailed at the first hint of pumpkin spice wafting through my ample nose hairs. Besides, when you’re cold, you can always put on more clothes, but when you’re hot, you can only take off so much without getting arrested or traumatizing your family members and pets. Just ask our cat.

This summer has been particularly brutal so far, with temperatures regularly reaching the triple digits and placing everyone’s lawn in hospice care. Our home air conditioner has been running non-stop for approximately four weeks and is now demanding a significant raise, enhanced benefits and casual Fridays. Yet I still have to expose at least one whole leg and an elbow outside of the bed covers at night (and risk being attacked by monsters) in order to sleep.

When I asked my wife about our latest electric bill, she refused to show it to me, simply suggesting that I find a second job and develop a taste for bologna sandwiches – minus the bologna.

Some families take the opportunity this time of year to vacation in cooler climates where deodorant actually works and you don’t have to wring out your briefs after waking to or from your car. But not our family. This summer, I took my wife and three teenage daughters on a road trip to sample the sweltering delights of New Orleans, Louisiana, where being outside during the summer is like walking around in a wet fur coat after wearing it in a hot tub full of gumbo. And we just returned from a short excursion southward to San Antonio, Texas, (named after the patron saint of scorching parking lots) – because it’s always smart to get as close to the equator as possible in early August.

Due to the extreme heat and the dangers associated with it, numerous media outlets are offering tips for surviving in navel-soaking temperatures. Here are a few of my own:

1. Stay hydrated, meaning you should drink as much fluid as possible so that you can spend lots of time enjoying the refreshing confines of an air-conditioned restroom. (The porcelain is delightfully cool.)

2. During the hottest part of the day, keep family pets indoors – where they can annoy you more effectively with their incessant noise, booty scooting, and staring at you when you snack. The same applies to children of any age.

3. Eat small meals, and eat more often. I’m not sure why this works, but I’m for it, especially the “more often” part.

4. Check on the elderly (and ask them to prepare you a meal if possible-see No. 3).

5. Set the air conditioner to a low temperature, and keep it there. If you’re worried about your electric bill, remember the bologna sandwiches (or see No. 4).

America experienced a previous heat wave in 1980 when I was ten years old, and my main concerns were catching the next episode of The Muppet Show and sorting out my strange new feelings for Brooke Shields. I don’t remember much about the weather, other than it was summertime and people were walking around in t-shirts that read, “I survived the 1980 Texas Heat Wave.” I guess I thought it was kind of cool, but not cool enough to distract me from Miss Piggy and Brooke in her Calvin Kleins.

These days, though, I take assaults on my sweat glands more seriously, and I hope you, too, will benefit from the tips I’ve offered as we all pray for cooler temperatures and sales on Wonder Bread and bologna.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

It’s time for another installment of “Places You Should Visit While You Can Still Bend Down to Tie Your Shoes without Making Involuntary Bodily Noises”!

This summer, my family decided to forgo our traditional swimsuit-rash beach trip in favor of a long weekend in New Orleans, Louisiana – also known as The Big Easy, The Crescent City, and the Birthplace of Indigestion. My wife and I figured that our three teenage daughters were finally old enough to appreciate the history and culture of an iconic American city best known for public nudity and unbridled debauchery.

Seriously, though, this was my second visit to New Orleans. The first was a business trip that resulted in a column prompting one unimpressed New Orleanian reader to describe me as a “poor man’s Dave Barry.” Of course, I thanked him for the compliment.

During our six-hour road trip through the bowels of the Bayou State, our desperation for snacks led us to share a large bag of Wavy Migos “Bar-B-Quin’ with My Honey” Rap Snacks potato chips my middle daughter purchased from a gas station convenience store in Lecompte, Louisiana. (I’m now considering the addition of Rap Snacks shares to my stock portfolio.)

When we finally checked in at the charming and historical St. James Hotel just outside the French Quarter, we all needed to use the historical bathroom, and when my eldest and most expensive daughter finished her turn, the historical door handle fell off of the historical bathroom door, trapping her inside. I eventually got the door open in an act of fatherly heroism, but only after I made her promise to limit her souvenir purchases to items that didn’t require long-term financing.

We then headed out for our first evening on the town, and, naturally, we were starving, so we stopped by the famous French Quarter Gumbo Shop for several scrumptious Creole dishes we couldn’t pronounce. We were also served appetizers of gumbo and desserts of pecan pie à la mode, which I’m pretty sure is a New Orleans city ordinance.

To prove to ourselves that we were still semi-mobile, we decided to waddle up to the riverfront across Decatur Street from Jackson Square where we encountered a street performer singing an anthem of my teenage years, “Don’t Stop Believin’” by the 1980’s rock powerhouse Journey. Although I was thoroughly enjoying the show, my wife and daughters finally convinced me to leave when the performer offered me a dollar if I’d stop trying to sing along.

We caught a magnificent sunset view of Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral from the river, and took turns taking photos with a couple of passersby – my daughters making sure to position me so that my enormous melon could be easily cropped out of their Snapchat pics.

Our next adventure involved a harrowing stroll through boisterous Bourbon Street so that our daughters could see what all of the hubbub was about and understand what happens when girl children don’t follow their dad’s advice about drinking, drugs, dressing modestly and snoozing in public walkways. I’m ashamed to admit that I was almost tempted to visit one of the plentiful strip clubs along the fragrant boulevard, but I thought better of it since they probably wouldn’t hire me, anyway.

We topped off the evening with a glucose smack down at legendary Café Du Monde for some golden fried beignets buried in a tsunami of powdered sugar. Since we were still a little hung over from the gumbo and pie, we shared the beignets– meaning I basically ate all but one of them.

Our first night in vibrant New Orleans was only the beginning of a terrific vacation full of excitement for our family and digestive systems. Most of all, it gave us a chance to share some fun and laughter together, especially when I bent down to tie my shoes.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

There have been countless jokes, comedy routines and humorous articles written about colonoscopies, but I’m a firm believer that, like Mexican food restaurants, there can never be too many. Besides, we now live in a world where each individual colon has the right to assert its own unique identity that can’t be categorized based on society’s stereotyped definitions of a large intestine.

So, here goes.

Ever since I turned 50 and my stylist started charging extra to brush my ear hair, several of my friends and loved ones have encouraged me to schedule a colonoscopy. At first, I was reluctant, maybe because the procedure conjured images of alien abductions involving bodily probing devices the size of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles. Or perhaps I was just afraid of what the gastroenterologist might discover based on my long history of devouring pretty much anything that the FDA has deemed semi-edible.

My worries were so profound that for the first couple of years of my 50s, I resorted to the cumbersome, awkward and potentially disastrous take-home colon cancer screening kits. But as my friend’s gastroenterologist once warned him, “There’s really no graceful way to catch a stool.”

And, sure enough, when I attempted to use the kits, my juggling performance usually resulted in a call for back-up from an emergency hazmat team.

But this year, motivated by the fear that I might not live long enough to become a financial and psychological burden on my three daughters, I decided to take the plunge (or the prod) and schedule a full-blown colonoscopy with all the trimmings.

As most of you know, a proper colonoscopy begins with the preparatory process of fasting and ingesting a regimen of military-grade laxatives designed to transform you into a human fire hose nozzle set to Armageddon strength. For me, though, the prep wasn’t as traumatic as I anticipated. Rather than having to set up a campsite next to the toilet, I was actually able to do some yard work – with the slight inconvenience of occasionally performing a penguin sprint to the bathroom.

By the end of the day, though, I understood what one of my friends meant when he advised that, instead of toilet paper, I should have a snow cone handy.

After a full day of fasting and counting enchiladas to get to sleep the night before, I was anxious to get the procedure over with in the morning so I could resume my steady diet of Tex-Mex and Andy’s Frozen Custard. I’m happy to say that the entire medical staff at the clinic was extremely cordial and accommodating, even though I couldn’t help thinking that they were all trying not to laugh – along with my wife.

I have to admit that I was a little nervous since this was the first time I’d ever been put to sleep (when not listening to a sermon in church), but the nurse anesthetist told me that it would be like taking a really good nap – while basically on the same drugs that killed Michael Jackson.

When I woke up, I expected to feel like I had been on the receiving end of a Build a Bear Workshop stuffing station. Instead, I felt surprisingly refreshed, well-rested and oddly ventilated.

I’m pleased to report that the doctor found my colon extremely boring and said that he wasn’t interested in seeing it again for ten years. I did request the bowel portrait family value package with two 8x10s, three 5x7s and eight wallets. He didn’t laugh.

Following the procedure, my wife drove me to the closest Mexican restaurant, and I experienced a great sense of satisfaction and relief that I had overcome my anxieties and done what was best for my health – while consuming an obscene amount of chips and salsa.

So, if you’ve been putting off your own colonoscopy, let me encourage you to get it done. You’ll have a great sleep, you can gorge guilt-free on your favorite food when it’s over, and it just might help you live long enough to become a financial and psychological burden on those you love the most.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

It’s time for another installment of “Places you should visit before your loved ones start picking out your burial underwear!”

Recently, my wife and I took a trip to Birmingham, Alabama, to attend the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ annual convention so that I could collect another “leg lamp” for humor writing. “It’s a major award!”

The drive from East Texas to Birmingham was a bladder-bloating 7 ½ hours, so we treated ourselves to several stops at convenience store restrooms along the way. I’ve found that interstate restrooms offer a true sense of an area’s distinctive character – and you can usually wash it off if you use enough hot water and antibacterial soap.

When we finally pulled into the picturesque city nestled amid the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, we were starving – as usual. And because we wanted to try some regional cuisine that truly represents the unique culture of the Deep South, we naturally chose a Tex-Mex chain restaurant.

In fact, I read that that Birmingham is sometimes called “The Magic City” because of how quickly the former industrial powerhouse grew after its founding, but I’m now convinced that the name represents the fact that it hosts two of my favorite Mexican restaurant franchises (Chuy’s and Superior Grill) within 3 ½ miles of each other. Abracadabra, indeed!

When we returned to our Double Tree hotel after supper, the clerk presented each of us with a famous (and warm) Double Tree cookie. Unable to resist such unhealthy deliciousness, I inhaled mine in the elevator, and because I’m always looking out for my lovely wife’s best interests, I waited until she was in the shower to eat hers.

The next day, we took a whirlwind guided history tour of the city, the highlight of which (besides the included snacks) was a stroll around Kelly Ingram Park and a visit to the 16th Street Baptist Church – “ground zero” for the civil rights struggle in America. The whole area has a powerfully sacred aura about it, and I was so moved by the history and symbolism of the place that I actually forgot about eating – briefly.

Speaking of eating, we also visited the historic Alabama Peanut Company where we sampled some quintessentially southern boiled peanuts. This was my second time to try them, and they are still the least peanutty-tasting, peanut-shaped things I’ve ever eaten – other than those orange marshmallow candy circus peanuts that are like chewing on a banana-flavored flip-flop. Boiled peanuts are similar in taste and texture to cooked beans – if beans had to be eaten two at a time and came in a soggy, inedible shell full of saline solution.

We found ourselves snackless again when the tour took us to the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark – because who doesn’t want to explore a dilapidated industrial complex that looks like the ideal location for a serial murder? Seriously, though, the hulking and labyrinthine site was magnificent – even in its state of rusted ruin, and learning about the countless laborers who spent decades in the oppressive heat and noise of the enormous furnaces reminded me of why I became an English major.

The last stop on our tour was Vulcan Park, situated atop Red Mountain and featuring the world’s largest cast iron statue, depicting Vulcan, Roman god of iron, the forge and, based on his rear view, pantlessness. The park offers an impressive cityscape view for those visitors who are able to avert their eyes from Vulcan’s massive metallic badonkadonk.

After the tour, we attended the NSNC awards banquet where we had a flavorful meal of baked salmon and white beans (or maybe they were boiled peanuts) and were honored to visit with legendary columnists from around the country, some of whom even applauded an East Texas goofball when I received my award.

Our weekend getaway to Birmingham was fun and enlightening for my wife and me, and I’m hopeful that she’ll forget all about the cookie incident before she starts picking out my burial underwear.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

A few days ago, my wife and I joined some friends for a gathering during a few rare hours when we weren’t busy hauling a teenager to some kind of expensive activity or hosting an entire herd of them at our home to ransack our pantry and abuse the plumbing. The highlight of the get-together was watching the final episode of “Stranger Things,” Season 4, Volume 1 on Netflix while snacking, catching up, snacking, reminiscing, snacking and snacking.

About a week before our friend gathering, my wife and I began the harrowing process of cleaning out the bedroom of our youngest of three teenage daughters to prepare for the delivery of new furniture – because she claimed she could no longer fit into her childhood bed without becoming a professional street contortionist (which doesn’t sound too bad to me). Throughout the ordeal, I couldn’t help drawing parallels between the “Stranger Things” universe and this bedroom reorganization project.

Now, I realize that some of you have better things to do than binge-watch original programming on an overpriced streaming service that is vying for the few dollars you have left after purchasing gasoline or a tube of ground beef­­ at Walmart. So, let me summarize the basic plot of this tribute to 1980s sci-fi films called “Stranger Things.”

The series centers around a group of nerdy teenagers in the 1980s who discover another dimension of reality known as The Upside Down – a dark and foreboding place where adolescents age 18 and under are tormented by supernatural monsters (and I don’t mean their parents). The teens fight the monsters with the help of a friend who has escaped from an oppressive research facility (and I don’t mean high school) and possesses telekinetic powers, chronic nosebleeds and the ability to cry on command.

The first notable comparison is with the teenage main characters of the series, who, aside from a few paranormal murders, are all experiencing typical hormonal turmoil, parental conflicts and feelings of anxiety about leaving their childhoods behind. Our daughter’s recent angst has mainly revolved around deciding which items in her stockpile of toys and stuffed animals to get rid of and which to continue hoarding in her “new” room until layers of prehistoric dust render them unrecognizable.

After waiting a few days for her to meticulously pick through approximately one million Lego pieces, I finally issued the idle threat that if she didn’t finish sorting them soon, I would donate them all to the Ukrainian army to scatter around for the invading Russians to step on. I’m happy to say she made the mature decision just to keep all of the Legos, probably in hopes that I would leave her alone.

Next is the show’s supernatural dimension known as The Upside Down, which one of the teen characters describes as a “dark reflection or echo of our world . . . a place of decay and death . . . a place of monsters,” which brings me to our daughter’s bedroom.

In addition to the typical teenager debris consisting of a dozen half-full plastic water bottles (none of them on coasters), crumb-filled Goldfish cracker wrappers, some unidentifiable and partially-eaten foodstuffs, and an array of soiled clothing, the monster in question takes the form of Biscuit, her Maltese-mix doglet. Along with laying the occasional organic land mine, Biscuit has a bizarre penchant for nibbling multiple holes in designer bedding sets. My daughter’s room is truly a macabre place I’m often reluctant to enter, which is probably the way she prefers it.

There are other “Stranger Things” parallels I could draw involving the bumbling parents and the questionable hairstyles in the show, but suffice it to say that because our youngest daughter has two older sisters, this isn’t our first trip into the Upside Down of teenage interior design. I’m just glad our own series is ending with Season 3.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

As I sit here in my uneasy chair, I can hear the screams and guffaws of what sound like about 500 teenagers in my backyard swimming pool for my middle daughter’s high school graduation party, and I wonder if a sufficient supply of chlorine shock treatments exists for that water ever to recover.

Even the dulcet tones of Taylor Swift blasting throughout the neighborhood at thermonuclear decibels aren’t enough to drown out the reality that this will be no ordinary summer.

Yes, our happy-go-lucky middle daughter recently graduated from high school, and we are extremely proud of her for gaining 13-years’ worth of knowledge and life skills, especially her mastery of the self-checkout at Target and her expertise in breaking up with goobers.

Since she is the middle child, we wanted to make sure she felt loved and appreciated at this special time in her life, so my wife and I threw her a big graduation bash to make up for all the times we kept her fed and occupied as a toddler by scattering a handful of Cheerios on the floor and hoping for the best.

With the passing of fall, winter and early spring, our back yard and pool looked like they had suffered a major incursion by the Russians, so I spent two weeks of raking, scrubbing, hauling, digging, planting, slipping disks and ignoring inflation at Lowe’s and The Home Depot to make the area relatively safe for teenaged-human occupancy.

After purchasing the yard improvements, pool chemicals, decorations, and a taco bar large enough to satisfy a biblical plague of locusts, we should still be able to afford sending our middle daughter to college sometime before her 50th birthday.

And speaking of college, our eldest and most expensive daughter came home from Texas A&M University for the summer and began her first “real” job­ – other than working frantically to return her bedroom to its original appearance as a giant clothing donation drop box. At first, she seemed reluctant to apply for summer jobs – until I gave her the choice of either working outside the home or serving as my personal assistant, pedicurist, toilet sanitizer, underwear folder, minesweeper for dog bombs, and other duties as assigned. I couldn’t help but giggle inside a little at the end of her first week of work when she told us how tired she was and that we were all going to have to start going to bed at a decent hour.

Because we will have two daughters in college this fall (I couldn’t talk either of them into a plumbing career) and we now have to finance a tank of gas, my wife and I decided to forgo our annual week-long summer road trip to Orange Beach, Alabama, in order to save money. But to keep our three daughters from forming a special House select committee to investigate this atrocity, we are considering a shorter jaunt to New Orleans to enjoy the food and history – with the added bonus of reminding them why we go to Sunday school.

Yes, this summer will be different. Our little birds are getting ready to fly, and we’ll soon only have one left in the nest to complain because we bought the Walmart Great Value worms instead of the name brand.

When I’m alone and feeling pensive about these changes, I pause to thank God for the wonderful years we’ve had with our girls and the exciting, if different, years to come. Then I put in my vintage, hand-me-down AirPods from one of my daughters, turn on some Taylor Swift and snack on a handful of Cheerios for old times’ sake.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

For the past few weeks, I’ve been engaged in a WWE cage match against allergies. No, it’s not COVID. I promise, it’s not COVID. Really, even when I blow my nose so loudly that it triggers nearby home and car alarm systems, it’s still not COVID.

It’s pretty sad that I feel obliged to defend my old-fashioned sinus “crud” against false assumptions, but it is what it is these days as news networks are constantly broadcasting some newly-recommended but recently-reversed, rescinded, revised, reconsidered and resurrected COVID protocol to defend against the latest sub-variant that’s filling in while all the regular variants are on vacation in Cancún.

Seriously, though, I get this same sinus ailment every year in late spring. It’s sort of a tradition. Maybe I should start buying it a gift and taking it out to dinner. My three teenage daughters would argue that I should buy them gifts for putting up with me when I’m in full-blown man-flu mode with Kleenex dangling from both nostrils when I greet their boyfriends at the door.

Just the other day, my youngest daughter reminded me to cough into the inside of my elbow­–rather than directly onto her iPhone screen when I confiscate it after she’s reached her daily 12-hour limit of YouTube videos. Who came up with that hygiene strategy, anyway? Certainly not the inside of my elbow. In fact, the inside of my elbow has considered lodging a formal protest with the CDC, suggesting that coughing and sneezing into the inside of the knee would be far more sanitary–and promote Kegel stretching.

I suppose the responsible thing to do would be to drag out one of my crusty, retired masks while I have this cold, but since I have to blow my nose about once every ten seconds, it would be like wearing pants part-time, which sort of defeats the purpose. Besides, I have my sense of fashion to think about, and face masks are so last surge!

The cause of this yearly sinus malady, other than the fact that my nose is roughly the size of a standard 100-watt light bulb, is mostly geographical. Those of us who live in the heavily-forested East Texas Piney Woods can only stand by helplessly as our aroused foliage engages in a shocking public display of unprotected relations every spring, the result of which is a yellow pollen plague of biblical proportions. This powdery menace coats every car, creeps into every crevice, and occupies every orifice–especially mine.

My allergy attack always begins with my throat feeling like I tried to swallow my wife’s shower loofah thingy (that I may or may not use to exfoliate my armpits). It then progresses to my head, which transforms into a fully-inflated Violet Beauregarde after she chewed Willy Wonka’s magic gum. And throughout the entire ordeal, I cough and hack like a toddler trying his first cigar.

Despite the symptoms, though, there are a couple of benefits to having “the crud.” First, my raspy voice takes on a sultry and ultra-masculine tone, and I sound like the love child of Barry White and Tone Loc, making my hymn singing in church especially soulful and funky. And then there’s the sympathy I get from my caring wife, who insists that I avoid working too hard and get plenty of sleep, which happen to be two of my main goals in life.

Because this year’s allergies developed into a sinus infection, my doctor prescribed a round of powerful antibiotics, which have basically turned my bowels into active lava tubes, but at least they’ve changed the subject.

Yes, I’m confident that good nasal health is just over the horizon as sure as our pollen-plagued East Texas spring turns into a blistering, humid summer – and we all seriously consider wearing pants part-time.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

It all started with the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020, and it’s one of the few lingering effects of the experience that hasn’t tempted me to seek intense electroshock therapy.

You might be thinking that I gained a renewed sense of unity with my wife and three teenage daughters – with whom I managed to stay cooped up for several weeks without setting my hair aflame and performing cartwheels naked down the street. (I kept my pants on.) Or maybe you assume that I found a fresh appreciation for the simple things in life – like good books, the great outdoors, and an underground survival bunker stocked exclusively with toilet paper.

While family unity and hoarding household paper products certainly came into focus during quarantine, I developed a passion for something else that has had an equally profound impact on my mental wellness – namely, dessert.

Because I wanted to stay out of my family’s way and avoid winding up in one of my daughters’ TikTok videos, I spent a lot of time alone in the kitchen (and not just secretly devouring Girl Scout Cookies one plastic sleeve at a time). I decided it was high time for me to learn to prepare some homemade treats that might lift everyone’s spirits and cholesterol levels.

Since then, I’ve become proficient with a couple of recipes that are high in carbs, sodium and other ingredients that make food worth eating. I even recently bought myself an apron – a black one so that I can pretend to be The Pioneer Woman AND Batman at the same time.

My personal favorite is an old-fashioned banana pudding recipe that my grandmother used to make – to the delight of the family and the detriment of our waistbands. I’ve learned that the secret to great banana pudding is homemade vanilla custard, rather than the inferior instant pudding mix from the box. It’s important to remember, though, that a high-quality custard requires constantly stirring the mixture over low heat long enough to make you wish you had just used the dang instant pudding mix from the box in the first place.

Unfortunately, there has recently been a local shortage of a key banana pudding ingredient, Nabisco’s iconic Nilla Wafers, which I’m sure is somehow Vladimir Putin’s fault. He clearly doesn’t understand the relationship between artificially-flavored snack cookies and world peace.

When I can’t find the Nilla Wafer mother lode at Walmart, I often turn to chocolate pie, which is especially popular with my wife and daughters. In fact, they often accuse me of spoiling them, but it’s really that I just can’t bear to think about a meal that doesn’t end with an excuse for me to spray aerosol whipped topping directly into my mouth.

Of course, making chocolate pie from scratch requires a precise measurement of Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder. When I was a boy child, I remember breaking into my grandmother’s pantry and sampling a generous spoonful, the bitter result of which was like suddenly discovering that Santa Claus isn’t real. (But since he is real and I learned to make pie, everything’s ok now.)

Making homemade desserts has opened up a whole new world of unhealthy deliciousness to me and my family. And although my pie sometimes caves in or my pudding doesn’t set, I always find the strength to power though the disappointment by eating the whole thing myself­ – for the sake of my mental wellness… and world peace.

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Copyright 2022 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].