Cagle World

Editor’s note: A version of this column was published in 2017.

Social media is driving up the cost of proms, as promgoers are under intense pressure to post glamourous prom photos on their feeds, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Some girls are spending $2,000 or more on their custom prom dresses. A typical cost for boys is $700 or more.

I offer some advice to 2024 promgoers, based on my own prom experience in 1980.

I didn’t know my date very well. She was in my photography class, pretty and, more importantly, available.

We arranged a pre-prom date to get to know each other. We played tennis on a blistering-hot day, then headed back to her house for something cold to drink. After she berated her sister for drinking all the Tang, she turned her turret on me.

“I heard about you, a regular class clown,” she said. “You better not show up in a limo, wear a top hat or cane or do anything else to embarrass me.”

I knew right away things were going to work out fine.

Still, I wanted to impress her. I was running a stone-masonry business in those years and was making a lot of money for a teen. I figured I’d use some of that hard-earned dough to win her praise.

I bought her the finest corsage in our high school. I bought a box of expensive steaks, snacks and other refreshments for the after-prom party. But my investments turned out to be bad ones.

On the afternoon of the prom, my friend Gigs and I — we double dated — took a drive to the prom hall to make sure we wouldn’t get lost later.

Later that evening, we picked up our girls for photos and false enthusiasm. We were late for dinner (we got lost) and the awful night was under way.

I’m certain my date didn’t spend hundreds of dollars on her dress as girls do now, though I remember she looked great.

The truth is, I can’t remember what she was wearing because I hardly saw her all night long. She and the girl Gigs came with spent most of the night in the ladies’ room, while Gigs and I counted how many times the low-budget rock band played “Cocaine” (nine).

Finally, around 11:30 p.m., the dance was over. Unlike teens these days, we didn’t use our credit cards to retire to the honeymoon suite. We took the girls home. But our suffering was just beginning.

We picked up our dates early the next morning and drove to a country cabin where my friend Cook was having an after-prom party. The cabin was a two-hour drive, but it took us five (we got lost).

My date didn’t utter a word until about 2 p.m., when she challenged Gigs and me to a tennis match. I took it as a good sign. It wasn’t.

Gigs is an outstanding athlete and I’m no slouch myself. Once the game got under way, our testosterone got inflamed. Every time we scored, Gigs and I high-fived each other, laughing loudly. We creamed the girls, and after the match they refused to talk to us.

Gigs and I spent the rest of the day tossing a football and eating steaks. Around dusk, the girls found us and told us it was time to leave. We got home five hours later (we got lost) and the torturous affair was finally over.

So, I have some advice for 2024 promgoers: Spend as little money as possible on fancy duds to impress your social-media followers.

Be content that you’re about to have one of the most miserable experiences of your life!

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Boy, is technology making us ruder. It all started with email.

You see, long before the era of nasty Facebook posts and mean tweets — long before people had such an easy means to be rude to each other — there was a much tamer version of email rudeness.

Let me share an email incident I experienced firsthand in 1999.

Having just moved to Washington, D.C., I joined a large writer’s organization, hoping to meet other writers — or, to be more precise, WOMEN writers.

I got permission from the writer’s organization to send a happy-hour invitation to all of its members on its email broadcast list or “listserv.” This was how groups of people communicated electronically before websites and social media were common.

About 40 writers attended the first happy-hour gathering — one that would turn out to be the last.

As it went, one woman there was particularly attractive. I soon found myself in competition with another writer fellow, who was also trying to win the lass’s attention.

She soon made it clear that she had zero interest in either of us knuckleheads, and that she came only to discuss the writing craft.

Soon after she landed her blow, the other fellow and I quickly realized the pickings were otherwise slim — and also that some women writers came to meet men.

One woman, a large woman of overpowering verbosity, soon had us pinned up against the bar. For the rest of the evening, she shoved a dozen opinions at us on every subject under the sun. It was the first time in my life I was happy to hear the words “last call.”

The next morning, I got an e-mail from the other fellow. He thanked me for organizing the event, then said, “and for goodness sakes, for the next happy hour, don’t invite any more loud, large, obnoxious women!”

I was surprised by the rudeness of the fellow’s e-mail. That should have been the end of it. But it was just the beginning.

You see, instead of e-mailing his response only to me, he unwittingly sent it to all of the members of the writer’s organization, some of whom, much to his poor luck, were also large women of overpowering verbosity.

I don’t know how many e-mail responses came that day, but the number surely topped 100. The storyline was quickly established: Our heroine, who was so viciously attacked, did nothing to deserve such abuse and, incidentally, it’s typical of misogynistic men to feel threatened by intelligent women.

As for our male villain, he was dubbed an idiotic male rogue. He should not only apologize, but he should resign from the writer’s organization, give up writing, and move to another city, where, hopefully, something bad would happen to him.

Well, that incident happened well before smartphones and social media gave people license to become increasingly rude to each other.

According to the journal of Computers in Human Behavior, these technologies give us an anonymity that enables us to post things we’d never say to another human in person.

Psychology Today says that a simple “lack of eye contact” is what is driving increasingly nasty tweets and posts, making rudeness in our society “our new normal.”

Today’s growing social-media incivility makes me long for the good old days of email rudeness, when you could only offend a couple hundred people at a time.

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

“Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day” is on April 25th, and I think we should try something different this year: Let’s take our daughters and sons to grandma’s.

The Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day Foundation says that April 25th is designed to be more than just a career day — more than the practice of “shadowing” an adult in the workplace.

It’s equally important to show children “the value of their education, helping them discover the power and possibilities of work and family life…”

It’s about “providing boys and girls a chance to share how they envision the future, and allowing them to begin steps toward their goals in a hands-on and interactive environment…”

I couldn’t agree more. That’s why we need to take our kids to grandma’s this year.

Look, it’s important to prepare our children for their work future, so they may make good livings to provide for themselves and their families — people without skills that are valuable to employers are especially struggling right now as food and housing costs continue to soar.

But let’s remember that work is not everything and that having a career in a big corporation is not all it is cracked up to be — not when you factor in corporate politics, the occasional nasty person who makes everyone else’s working life unpleasant, and that your corporate employer will happily drop you in your peak middle-aged earning years in favor of someone younger, who will work for half the cost.

The truth is, the most important lessons about becoming a successful adult are best taught by grandma.

Grandma will take her grandchildren for a nice walk in the woods in the sweet spring air, showing them different plants and flowers and how to steer clear of poison ivy.

She’ll tell them stories about colorful and cherished family members who have passed on — especially grandpa, who she made a wonderful life with during 66 years of marriage.

She’ll tell them what life was like when she was a child, long before there was a smartphone in every pocket — long before noise and chaos were wreaking havoc on the minds of today’s children.

She’ll tell them how simple childhood used to be. That a child’s job is to play — to nurture the imagination and grow and develop the mind.

Grandma, after all, is the only person on earth who knows the difference between what is and isn’t really important in this fleeting life, and she knows that nobody ever left this world wishing they’d spent more time at the office.

Yes, developing marketable skills is important and children should be taught such lessons.

But as our culture becomes increasingly rude and so many hearts are becoming so rigid and hard, it’s equally important to teach kindness, compassion, manners and how all of us should treat others the way we wish to be treated.

Grandma can teach these life skills better than anyone.

Now that I think of it, maybe we should make “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Grandma’s” its own special day every spring!

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

“It wasn’t my fault the car in front of me hit me. I glanced at my text message for only a second when our bumpers collided.”

“How could the car in front of you hit you?”

“The idiot stopped to let a deer cross the street — and dented my front bumper with his rear bumper. Yet the cops wrote me up for texting while driving!”

“It’s because of people like you that April has become National Distracted Driving Awareness Month! Safety advocates are urging drivers like you to avoid texting or watching streaming video on their phones, while behind the wheel of their cars!”

“A whole month to make people aware of the risks of distracted driving?”

“That’s right. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 3,522 people were killed in traffic crashes involving a distracted driver in 2021, and an estimated 362,415 people were injured.”

“Look, I’m in sales and on the road a lot. I’ve gotten pretty good at talking, eating, texting and driving. It wasn’t my fault some idiot front-ended me.”

“That’s simply not true. According to The New York Times, a Michigan professor found that when someone tries to multitask, important neural regions in the brain must switch back and forth. This opens up opportunities for serious mistakes behind the wheel.”

“But it’s not my fault my wife wants immediate answers when she texts me!”

“Look, our roadways have changed significantly over the years. For starters, many of our cars are so comfortable and quiet, people forget they’re operating a two-ton hunk of steel. They’re able to zone out to music or yap on the phone, oblivious to the millions of things that could go wrong.”

“But I invested a lot of dough in my sound system. It would be a waste not to blast the speakers!”

“To make matters more challenging, there are lots more cars on the road. According to Forbes, more than 97% of American households have one car and nearly 23% have three or more!”

“So we’re a rich country. What’s wrong with that?”

“It only means that there are lots more drivers on the road — drivers of every age and experience level. We know, for instance, that teen drivers are distracted more easily than older drivers — especially when their peers are in the car with them.”

“My wife and I solved that problem. We got our daughter a ’76 Pacer. She never leaves the house.”

“That’s funny. The point is, the more distracted drivers there are on the road, the greater the opportunity for accidents. And add to that challenge a mix of ever-changing technologies — smartphones, iPads, laptops and GPS devices — and you have a recipe for disaster.”

“You make some good points.”

“Look, many people are wary of the government intervening in our lives, but there is wide agreement that this is one area where the government needs to intervene. Many states have implemented distracted driving laws and with good reason.”

“OK, I agree with you and I’ll stop texting while driving. But please know that my driving skills are widely admired by other drivers. They even praise me when I cut them off!”

“They do?”

“Why else would they keep giving me the ‘You’re No. 1’ finger gesture?”

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Wise and witty thoughts are the only things that bring me any solace during tax-filing season — thoughts, such as these:

“The best way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream.” (Bill Murray)

“What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.” (Mark Twain)

“It’s fitting that April 14 is National Pecan Day, because it is the day we recognize nuts, and April 15 is the day we pay our taxes to support them.” (Craig Ferguson)

Billy, that’s a great idea. Mark, let’s not forget that the tax collector also skins our wallets. And, Craig, you explain well why our tax system is nutty.

Our country’s founders had plenty to say about taxes:

“What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.” (Thomas Paine)

“I cannot lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” (James Madison)

“It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income.” (Ben Franklin)

Hey, Tom, Jim and Ben, you’d be shocked at the level of plunder, “benevolence” and taxation that’s going on. The only Americans who enjoy an income tax around 10 percent these days are those who moved to Russia.

The great leaders of the 20th century — the century that brought us the 16th Amendment and the income tax — have different takes on taxation:

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” (Winston Churchill)

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” (Ronald Reagan)

“Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

Hey, Frankie, I prefer fewer taxes, as Churchill and Reagan did. I don’t mind paying my dues for organized society, but any thoughts on when we might get one?

Here are more quotes that remind me of our slick-talking politicians:

“Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay.” (Milton Friedman)

“Did you ever notice that when you put the words ‘the’ and ‘IRS’ together, it spells “THEIRS?” (Unknown)

“We must care for each other more, and tax each other less.” (Bill Archer)

Well, Bill some of our politicians think the way to care for each other more is to tax us more. And because some Americans fail to understand that there aren’t enough “rich” to tax and that “tax the rich” is code for “tax everyone more,” our taxes shall go up — and our government will get a bigger share of “theirs.”

Ah, well, there’s little to do the next few weeks except commiserate with others who are suffering tax woes. This quote perfectly sums up how millions are feeling right now:

“The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it’s more like a tired feeling.” (Paula Poundstone)

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Learn more about Tom’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos with his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

My 13-year-old goddaughter still can’t understand how telephone busy signals used to work.

She can’t help it.

At 13, she’s a member of the Gen Alpha generation, kids born between 2010 and 2024, which is the first generation to NOT know what life was like before social media and artificial intelligence were everywhere.

I tried to explain that before call waiting was commonplace in the mid-1980s, a caller would get a busy signal if a phone line was being used.

When I was in high school, I told her, we only had one telephone line. My father, a Bell Telephone man, installed five heavy-duty phones in our house, but all of them were connected to a single landline.

When someone called us, the ringing brass bells created such a hullabaloo, it sounded like someone was breaking into the Fort Knox Bullion Depository.

But the bells didn’t ring often, because, between my mother and five sisters, somebody was always tying up the line.

When I needed a ride home after football practice, I placed a dime into the pay phone, turned the rotary dial with my finger and was then greeted by an annoyingly loud buzzer that suggested: Loser! Try again!

This silly story illustrates the stark contrast between the innocent childhood I experienced as a tail-end Baby Boomer and the all-digitized childhood she is experiencing as a Gen Alpha.

Modern childhood is fraught with digital landmines.

According to The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children between 8 and 12 spend 4 to 6 hours a day using digital devices, such as smartphones, while teens spend up to 9 hours.

AACAP says unmonitored children are likely to be exposed and influenced by risk-taking behaviors, sexual content, substance use, negative stereotypes, misinformation and advertising aimed at motivating a child to buy or act.

It’s no wonder, according to AACAP, that children exposed to too much screen time suffer things like sleep problems, lower self-esteem, too little face-to-face social interaction with family and friends and less time outdoors enjoying physical activity.

Research psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge says that a surge in Gen Z mental health issues is the direct result of the rise of smartphones and social media, which began in earnest in 2012.

“Happiness started to decline, life satisfaction declined, expectations went down,” Dr. Twenge told the New York Post. “Depression went up, and this pessimism really took root among young people.”

She says the hyper-connectivity of social media proved to be an unmitigated experiment for Gen Z — and also an unmitigated disaster for nurturing our most anxious and unhappy generation yet.

Twenge and others argue that all parents need to unite and make sure their kids are not exposed to social media too early.

Parents also need better tools to monitor and regulate their kids’ social media usage and she says the government must play a bigger role, giving them more robust tools to monitor and restrict the content children are able to access.

The debate around regulating social media and, now, AI, is going to be robust, as it should be – especially since we already know that unfettered social media has damaged one generation.

I called my goddaughter to warn her about the perils of social media, but she never answers.

Apparently, talking on the phone is something only a “pre-millennial” dork would attempt to do.

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

A growing number of Americans think the American Dream is out of reach, but I think they are wrong.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, only 36% of voters said the American Dream still exists, way fewer than the 53% who believed so in 2012.

Half of the poll’s respondents believed that America’s economic and political systems are “stacked against people like me.”

These are troubling findings, but I think more of our native-born non-believers need to start dreaming — and acting — like American immigrants.

Many immigrants still believe hard work will help them get ahead in America and ensure that their kids will have the opportunity to really flourish in the land of the free.

I met many such wonderful people while living in Washington, D.C.

I knew one fellow, who came to America from a small Irish village to work as a butler. He married and started a family.

To improve his income, he began selling insurance. By his 40th birthday, he had raised enough capital to start his own highly successful Irish pub — one that afforded him a fantastic living.

I knew two brothers from India who owned a convenience store and sandwich shop. The older brother had been a professor at a technical school in his homeland.

But because his English was not yet strong, he had trouble finding similar academic work in America.

He didn’t complain. He took whatever job he could — busboy, cook, janitor — and saved every penny. He used his savings to bring his wife here, and then, one at a time, his five siblings.

He and his brother eventually saved enough to buy a convenience store, then a motel. He was in his late 50s when I met him. Last time I saw him a decade ago, he’d been offered $6 million for the land upon which his convenience store sat.

But here’s how he really achieved his American dream: Both of his American-born sons became doctors.

I rented an apartment from another fellow who had been born in Beirut, Lebanon, where his father had two businesses and his family was well off. Then civil war tore their country apart. His family lived in a bombed-out building for three years before they were able to make their way to America.

We were the same age, and our childhoods could not have been more different. When we were both 14, I was enjoying long bike hikes in the quiet suburbs — and he was dragging dead bodies into a pile to burn them, because the stench was unbearable.

When his family was finally able to escape to America, they were broke. He took a job as a janitor. His siblings took on menial work. The family saved $20,000 and used the money to open a bakery. He is now the president of a bakery that, last I checked, employs more than 150 people.

Look, despite inflation, high interest rates and anti-entrepreneurial regulations, the American Dream is still alive and well for anyone willing to work for it.

In fact, the Washington Post says more Americans than ever are starting their own businesses.

I’m one of those dreamers, who, at 61, just started another business creating humorous cybersecurity learning content. This is on top of another thriving business in the short-term apartment business and, of course, the column- and book-writing business.

Business is good. And my American Dream is alive and well.

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

Piglet! My Irish surname means piglet!

Like millions of Americans, I’ve been poking into my heritage using ancestry sites, such as FamilySearch.com.

That’s how I learned that “Purcell” is an occupational name of Norman origin for “swineherd.”

My name derives from the Norman-French word “pourcel,” which comes from the Latin word “porus,” which means piglet!

I always thought my heritage was mostly Irish and German, but I’ve just learned I’m part British, French and Scandinavian?

OK. Now I understand why I love jokes that begin like this: “An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Scandinavian walk into a bar…”

Until I started my research, all I knew about my heritage was that my great grandfather, Thomas James Purcell, came over from Ireland in about 1885.

He got a laborer job in the steel mills and met his bride, Jane Shappey, at a saloon near the mills that her family ran.

Jane’s family had also immigrated to Pittsburgh around the 1880s. They came from Alsace-Lorraine when she was a child, and the Shappeys proudly considered themselves French, not German.

Jane and Thomas’s union produced eight children, seven daughters and one son, my grandfather, also named Thomas James Purcell.

Jane suffered much grief in her 79 years. She lost three daughters, one as a child and two in their 20s, a young grandson and her husband.

She also lost her only son, my grandfather, who died from strep throat in 1937 when she was 65 and he was only 33.

Despite the significant losses, Jane — better known as “Grandma Purcell” — was a live wire and her house was always full of laughter.

During the Great Depression, several adult family members and their children lived together in her big house on Orchlee Street.

They made their own hooch in a bathtub distillery, and her grandchildren would tell me years later how they played for hours in the large fruit cellar in the basement.

I never got to meet Grandma Jane Purcell or any of her children, with the exception of her last surviving daughter, Helen, who doted on me when I was a boy, because I must have reminded her of her little brother, my grandfather.

Helen had two sons, Jack and Tom, who threw magnificent family parties over the years — Christmas gatherings, graduation parties, family reunions, weddings and other events.

It was there I got to mingle with my large extended clan, each of us owing our very existence to our immigrant ancestors, Thomas and Jane.

What a mix of salt of the earth characters and excellent citizens, neighbors and family caretakers did Thomas and Jane produce!

All of their wonderful children and grandchildren are gone now, with the exception of Judy, the daughter of Thomas and Jane’s youngest daughter, Eugenia.

I get wistful every year around St. Patrick’s Day, as I miss so many beloved family members who have departed.

I get especially wistful about the love story of my dad, also named Thomas James Purcell, and his bride, Elizabeth, who had five daughters and one son, yet another Thomas James Purcell (that would be me!) — as well as 17 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren and counting.

My mother is the current holder of the “Grandma Purcell” title and her house has long been a place of incredible laughter and joy for the wonderful cast of characters she and my father produced.

Her reign, too, will one day pass, but I’m filled with joy to know that younger generations will pick up her mantel.

That means only one thing will agitate me as I muse about my heritage every year: My surname means piglet!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

Get this: Men and women’s brains are different.

Using a powerful, first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence model, Stanford Medicine was able to determine with a 90% success rate whether or not an MRI scan of human brain activity was coming from a male brain or a female brain.

“The findings, the investigators suggest, help to resolve a longstanding controversy about whether reliable sex differences exist in the human brain,” reports Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

Controversy?

I grew up an only boy with five sisters. My father and I figured out more than half a century ago that men and women have innately different brains.

However, prior to about 20 years ago, according to Stanford Medicine Magazine, the neuroscience community thought the difference in male and female brains was due to cultural influences.

You know, the old argument that boys like toy trucks because toy trucks are pushed on them as children and little girls like dolls because dolls are pushed on them.

But in the early 2000s those claims were disabused by a variety of studies, according to Psychology Today that, put simply, showed the circuitry in male and female brains is wired differently and these innate differences result in different behavior.

It’s not to say a male brain is better than a female brain, or vice versa.

But Stanford Medicine Magazine says that women generally have greater reading and writing abilities than men.

They’re also better at retrieving information from their long-term memory — especially everything we’ve done wrong since the moment we met them.

A 2014 University of Pennsylvania study found that females routinely use both sides of their brains in a highly coordinated manner, whereas men often use only one.

Women would be shocked if they knew how many things we use only half a brain to do.

For example, one study found that the male brain doesn’t pick up as many sensory cues as a woman’s.

When a man walks into his home, for example, he isn’t likely to notice dust — which, I’m told, consists of fine, dry particles that settle on furniture.

That’s one reason men do one-third as much housework as women, according to Fast Company — and also why, according to the great humorist P.J. O’Rourke, we clean our place about once every girlfriend.

The male brain also has superior visual-spatial awareness. We’re better at navigation, creating and using tools or understanding abstract concepts, such as geometry.

Our noggins are wired for larger spaces, such as the garage, the backyard, the golf course, or, some ancient time ago, hunting wooly mammoths out in the wild with our buddies.

Sure, some men are neat freaks and homebodies and some women are sloppy and couldn’t care less about the inside of their homes.

But on average, where biology is concerned, it’s clear male and female brains are different.

For instance, notes Stanford Medicine, why are women more prone to suffering depression, while men are twice as likely to have issues with drugs and alcohol and 10 times more likely to suffer dyslexia?

Personally, I think a man is at his best when he finds a lifelong companion whose female brain is strong in multiple ways in which his is weak.

Look, surely we can all agree we don’t need an MRI to know that men and women have different ways of thinking.

To borrow from legendary humorist Dave Barry, we all know which parent is more likely to drive off from the supermarket with the baby still in the baby seat he had set on the roof of the car.

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].

President Biden recently sent an email to 153,000 student-loan borrowers reminding them to vote for him this autumn.

Actually, his email said that he is going to put America into even more hock to repay the college loans they had willingly taken out years ago.

Putting it bluntly, his email said that the millions of Americans who repaid their student loans, or worked two or three jobs to minimize their college borrowing, or who never went to college at all, must cover the debt of 153,000 people who did.

As it goes, last summer, the Supreme Court said Biden’s ambitious $20,000-per-student college loan-forgiveness plan — which would have cost the rest of us $420 billion — was unconstitutional.

Not to worry, Biden’s staff quickly went to work looking for other avenues to relieve student-loan debt.

They looked for wiggle room in a law that was passed nearly 60 years ago, the Higher Education Act, that they said gives the Secretary of Education the ability to waive student-loan debt.

That bureaucratic trick gave them the authority to forgive debt for the 153,000 people enrolled in the income-driven SAVE program — Saving on a Valuable Education — who originally borrowed $12,000 or less and have made payments for at least 10 years.

Of course, the program doesn’t “save” anything. It simply transfers the bill for about $1.2 billion to the rest of us.

To date Biden boasts he has “saved” $138 billion for 3.9 million borrowers.

But those savings are tacked right onto our $34 trillion national debt that, thanks to the reckless spending of both parties in Washington, is on track to hit $54 trillion in 10 years.

Which brings us back to the student-loan situation.

The New York Times shares the story of Biden visiting the home of one student-loan borrower, 49-year-old educator Eric Fitts.

The middle-aged elementary school principal, who still owed $125,000 in college loans, told Biden “how much of a burden it was and how much of a barrier it was for certain things and opportunities,” reports the Times.

I feel for Fitts. Debt is unpleasant. But why didn’t he consider the consequences of all that debt BEFORE he willingly signed the paperwork to borrow it and promise to pay it back?

Why didn’t millions of other young Americans – or their parents — think things through before they took on a cumulative $1.7 trillion in student-loan debt?

I’m not sure how this student-loan situation is going to play out come voting time.

On one hand, no small number of able-bodied young people feel it is not their responsibility to pay off the college debt they willingly took on. They will vote for the candidates who promise them more forgiveness.

On the other hand, I’m betting a lot more people who did make great sacrifices to repay their college debts are not only angered at being forced to repay other people’s loans, they’re worried about this country’s financial future.

They’re worried that millions of Americans feel no shame about letting others relieve them of their financial responsibilities — and that millions couldn’t care less about America’s runaway spending and debt.

They’ll likely vote against candidates like Biden who are trying to buy their votes with their own taxpayer contributions.

Then, again…

Hey, Joe, if you cut me a check for the $15,000 in student loans and interest I paid back years ago, I’ll consider giving you my vote!

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Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Purcell, creator of the infotainment site ThurbersTail.com, which features pet advice he’s learning from his beloved Labrador, Thurber, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Email him at [email protected].