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November 9, 2007

Stop and smell… well, you know

Filed under: Baldo, Bill Bickel, CIDU, comic strips, comics, flowers, soccer — Cidu Bill @ 12:02 am

baldo-flowers.gif
I see what’s happening here, but what exactly is the joke?

14 Comments »

  1. I think she just stole that soccer ball!

    Comment by NEIM — November 9, 2007 @ 4:55 am

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  2. The boys are so distracted by the flowers that they forget they’re playing soccer and she can score one goal after another?

    Comment by Ron Obvious — November 9, 2007 @ 6:59 am

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  3. Mr. Obvious seems to have gotten it, though it’s difficult to imagine the scenario playing out that way.

    Comment by Powers — November 9, 2007 @ 8:07 am

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  4. It happens a LOT in the Pee Wee crowd, especially if you are the goalie.

    Comment by Rasheed — November 9, 2007 @ 8:52 am

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  5. wow, that’s pretty gay then, lol

    Comment by NEIM — November 9, 2007 @ 10:19 am

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  6. Have you ever watched 4 year olds play soccer? They are distracted by everything – dandelions, a plane, a kite in the next field, some kid showing they latest scrape,etc.. But this scenario still doesn’t seem realistic.

    Comment by Janice — November 9, 2007 @ 10:41 am

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  7. It would work perfectly for Lio thought, wouldn’t it?

    I’ve often thought that cartoonists should set up a “gag exchange” for idea that simply wouldn’t work for the own comics.

    Just as an aside, while I haven’t watched any 4-year-olds playing soccer, I did have the surreal experience of coaching a team of 5-year-olds, in a heavily Portuguese town — in other words, where pee-wee soccer is taken slightly more seriously than high school football is in Texas.

    Comment by Cidu Bill — November 9, 2007 @ 10:49 am

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  8. Is the joke that stealing, albeit cleverly, is funny?

    Comment by Paul — November 9, 2007 @ 1:11 pm

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  9. I think the joke is that the girl can control time and space, since she got flowers to sprout from seeds within a few minutes. 😉

    Comment by Chaz — November 9, 2007 @ 1:17 pm

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  10. I know I’ve seen old cartoons, maybe Warner Bros., where an outfielder, on seeing a shot that’s a clear homer, puts a seed into the ground, pulls out a watering can, waters the seed, and puts himself on it. A tree grows up fast enough to elevate him to catch the ball.

    Since she has the flower seed packets, I think that is what’s happening here – only slightly more believable.

    Comment by Scott — November 9, 2007 @ 2:03 pm

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  11. Chaz, I don’t think the flowers are growing that quickly—this is long-range planning. Her clothes are different in the second and third panels.

    I’ll grant that 4 year olds are easily distracted, but then the flower-planting is pointless work; she could just as easily have distracted them with something else that she just picked up off the ground on the day of the game.

    Comment by Autumnal Harvest — November 9, 2007 @ 3:02 pm

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  12. Are both of the other kids in the final panel boys?

    If so, maybe it’s a commentary on gender roles? The girl gets the “boy object” by distracting the boys with “girl things”?

    Comment by PepperjackCandy — November 10, 2007 @ 2:28 am

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  13. Ah, so they are. I’d missed that, so my snark falls flat.

    Agreed that all you need to do to distract soccer players up to even age 9 [so far] is put them on a soccer field.

    Comment by Chaz — November 10, 2007 @ 11:08 am

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  14. There was something akin to this in Adam a few years ago. There was some British Beckham/Pele type that was coaching pee wee soccer, and Adam got mad the coach wasn’t playing his son. The coach yelled “what are you talking about? He’s been playing the whole game!” Adams’ son was the goalie way down at the other end of the field, and the coach ran such a tight team that the ball never came close, so Adams’ son would just play with whatever was handy (I think it ended bad though)

    Comment by Rasheed — November 10, 2007 @ 5:03 pm

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