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Comic Strip Yappy

Diane, I don’t remember all these cartoons.

We have novel-sized reams of mail sent to

each other from the nineties (in particular).

Was your intention to send me both Mary

Worth AND Apartment 3-G?  The latter,

whatever the case, seems hilarious,

looks like it would be a total scream 
to me (now - I certainly did not get
them at the time).  Also, The Far Side

never grows old, apparently.  I love the

one you sent of a young Captain Hook

who’s seeing a “job therapist” (I could

definitely use one of those, by the way)

because he’s torn between two potential

careers: pirating or massage therapy.  The

look on the therapist’s face is priceless.

Or did I make that part up?  Anyway,

one thing I didn’t make up were two

“Special Report” sidebars you must have

cut from something (From what, though?   
Was there a magazine called “Special Report” 
to which someone in your family – or, just as 
likely, you – subscribed?) that were titled
“Special Report 2” and “Special Report 3.” 
They remind me of the pamphlets that folks 
in and around Chinatown are always passing

out about the ... Falun Gong ... I think?

I’ve no recollection beyond that, at

the moment because I’m reminded

of the man (I actually really miss him) 
who stood on a dais made of a couple 
of milk crates, I believe, on the corner 
of Grant and Washington Streets (or 
Grant and one of the cross-streets 
nearby Washington Street) literally 
all day long sing-saying “Happy Happy

Happy” over and over and over again.  
Only it sounded more like “Appy Yappy

Yappy” to me.  So I’d be sing-saying

the same, all the rest of the day, 
when I had the joy of running into him.  
It gave me a very warm feeling, and I 
felt reassured and okay, as in I’m gonna

be okay because Appy Yappy Yappy.  
There really are a lot of these letters, 
Diane.  All in one envelope, for example, 
there’s an 8 1/2" x 11" handwritten letter, 
along with a Gil Thorpe strip, an always 
seemingly worthless comic (to me) that 
I only now, as I read through your letters 
and their various surprise enclosures,

seem to be getting.  Like, I GET 
Gil Thorpe! How crazy is that?  
And then there’s Mary Worth, 
another soap opera strip with

only two or three frames a day,

like the soapy and oh-so-slow
moving Dick Tracy, a strip I 
actually read and read, but
never actually got, to be per-

fectly honest.  Who knows why,

though, because even back then 
I loved  soap operas (I’d watch 
Days of Our Lives and The Young 
& the Restless – which starred
David Hasselhoff, at the time – with 
my mom from before I went to school.
I remember this!)  I always felt in these 
drawn-out dramas that there was

some sort of humor that I must surely
have been totally missing.  And

there must have been.  Because 
you sent me strip after strip after

strip, along with your three- to seven-
paged incredibly engaging letters,
most all of which I took photographs of 
before everything in my storage unit
went to auction.  These are the things

that life is made of. Of which life is 
made.  Which make life.  For which
I am beyond grateful.