Forgetful Saturday
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Pluggers, 10/25/25
Pluggers are exhibiting signs of senile dementia, and it’s beginning to have a negative impact on their day-to-day life. Look at this guy, he’s staring at the side of his watch as if that’ll tell him what’s going on. It’s very sad!
Judge Parker, 10/25/25
Speaking of forgetting things, I breezily posted “Pet squirrel? Before my time” in response to Neddy telling Charlotte that she and Sophie once had a pet squirrel, sort of, only to have many faithful readers point out to me that, in fact, this storyline was from late 2014 and early 2015, which was very much during my time, as it happens! The short version is that the Spencer-Drivers got an RV but squirrels attacked the engine, and Sophie adopted one that she called “the Dude,” and it got lost but then later found. Now, none of that is very likely to happen in real life, but I have to say it’s infinitely less likely that a child Charlotte’s age would only pretend to go into paroxysms of glee over getting a pet squirrel, then later say with an eerily calm demeanor that her little meltdown had simply been a test to see if the adult caring for her was honest and forthright. I don’t think that’s the sort of thing that happens at all, if I’m being honest.
50 replies to “Forgetful Saturday”
Judge Parker:
“With that kind of motivational complexity and artifice, you’re actually 35 years old, aren’t you, Charlotte.”
JP: I’ve seen children behave like Charlotte before, but only in horror movies like The Omen and Children of the Corn. Maybe Judge Parker is setting up a Very Special Halloween Episode?
JP: Well, if nothing else, the dresser behind Charlotte seems to be amused by her passive-aggressive antics.
JP: A six month arc’s worth of strips featuring Charlotte outwitting Neddy on the daily is… not so bad, actually.
Judge Parker:
“See this piece of furniture behind me, Neddy? — it holds historical information on our GNP; a compendium of information on batting and pitching records for baseball players; and graphs and charts on our rate of inflation and unemployment rate.”
“Why is that, Charlotte?”
“It’s the ‘Bureau of Statistics‘ !”
Pluggers aren’t sure where they are either. They thought they had just stepped outside to bring the trash to the curb, but now they seem to be on some dirt road with no house in sight? How long have they been pushing that trash bin? Is this still even Pennsylvania? Pluggers have a lot of questions.
JP: “You want to know how little I actually care about squirrels? I’ll give you a clue: I didn’t get this soup out of a can…”
Come to think, I’ve also seen that Pluggers
jokecaption before. Maybe the cartoonist is also getting forgetful, and readers like Eric Clapper of Loysburg are snickering as they send in a year-old strip to see if it gets used.Pluggers:
You know you’re a Plugger when you take the trash out days in advance of collection time — so as not, G_d forbid, to miss that important Moment of Retrieval — thus allowing nocturnal pests like raccoons and opossums to tear the contents of waste disposal receptacles to shreds in the interim and turn the neighborhood into a landfill.
Pluggers: Also, there’s no date on this guy’s watch — so if it says “11:05,” I guess he’s waiting to put the garbage out on November 5th. And all the eggs on the side of his house on October 31st will really smell up the place for a few days.
Judge Parker: “Can you trust me? I’m over here eating oatmeal with a fork, so I would say absolutely not.”
Family Circus: Aww, it’s so cute — li’l Jeffy is developing his first body dysmorphic disorder!
Judge Parker:
“Neddy, what will come first? — world peace, or plot resolution of any story arc depicted in this strip at any time from August 22, 2016 to the present?”
MW: “I can only hope to someday attain what Olive has.” Says Jeff as he drives around the harbor in his million-dollar yacht.
JP: Charlotte’s a wee bit creepy. Maybe get her a Talking Tina doll?
MW: I had to triple-check the drop-down menu to make sure I had today’s strip, because it’s virtually indistinguishable from yesterday’s. And Thursday’s. And Wednesday’s.
MW: As Jeff and Mary continue to express their shared wisdom about the pace of psychic development along the vast timeline of human evolution, Daisy sinks slowly to the floor with a quiet moan of desperation.
Luann: Well, that was pointless and stupid…
@Ken: Of course they are. On that day, Neddy will wake in the middle of the night, come downstairs (despite the cabin only having one floor because Shut Up) to find the raspberry-haired brat standing before the front door, a bright glow coming from without.
‘Mommy’s home…’ the brat will say with her eerie calmness before the door gets blasted off its hinges and through the smoke and debris will step CIApril, who has had thrilling adventures and escapes all across Europe as she fought to get back to her daughter, all of which happened completely off panel and will never be mentioned again as CIApril scoops up her brat and simply says ‘Let’s go home…’
Starting November 3, we go see just how pissy living in beautiful Norway away from Glucas has made Sophie.
JP: I just realized that, Judge Parker being… what it is, Charlotte’s “if I can trust you” can only mean that she knows where her parents are — they probably sent a Morse code message to a micro-receiver implanted in her teddy bear — and needs an adult-ish person like Neddy to buy the tickets and travel with her to their hideout in (spins wheel) the Mato Grosso.
@The Quiet Man:
So, virtually indistinguishable from any other Luann strip then?
@Charterstoned: #13
I…I tried..I honestly tried…
Maybe I’ll go see what Dawn and Wilbur are up to.
JUDGE PARKER/MARY WORTH: So..um…these are just the origin stories, yes? The prologue to the inevitable moment when Olive (optimistic but naive psychic wonderchild) meets Charlotte (cynical, hardened, worlld-weary daughter of a CIA Agent) meet to form their own action-adventure biddy comedy, right?
There is no effin’ way pluggers don’t have wall calendars that they write a big X on at the end of each day, with each garbage day for the coming year dutifully written down immediately after they buy the calendar in October.
@Daisy: GAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
In evolutionary terms, Olive is as far above us as we are above the sea slug. Speaking of which, what’s tonight’s special at the bum boat?
FC: Jeffy has stumbled onto the century old problem of fitting gravity into the quantum framework of space-time.
@Hibbleton: Well, if you want to talk in evolutionary terms, I think this would be an apt point in the plot line for Jeff and Mary to slither back into the briny depths from which they came.
Pluggers: Yes, Pluggers probably missed “Garbage Day“. These elderly exurbans probably didn’t have broadband until the mid 2010s, too late to enjoy classic YouTube memes like Charlie Bit My Finger, Sonic Sez and Garbage Day. When it reappeared on their Facebook Reels, no doubt recaptioned as Ring camera footage of the shocking crime in American cities, they had no clue what was going on!
JP Note to self: if a soap strip suddenly starts to show age-appropriate behaviour of a kid, it just means they’re setting up an even worse way of showing they they don’t understand children at all.
Yeah, I’m now betting on Charlotte having some Spy Kids plan to go find her parents
BB I know Saturdays are where cartoonists bury their weak ones, but not only is there nothing joking about Beetle’s observation, I thought Pvt Romeo (or whatever his name is) (1) had a lot of dates (2) was as interesting as every other character there (3) did act non-boorishly and (4) acted like he did the usual for dates like paying.
Pluggers depend on their neighbors’ wheelie bins being out at the curb to remember trash day, which works fine unless all their neighbors are Pluggers too.
Lockhorns: That’s it, thug life is officially passe.
H&L: It is sort of refreshing to ask “How are they even married?” of the secondary couple, not the main couple. (Looking at you, Leroy and Loretta.)
Gasoline Alley: Extending the diner’s hours to second shift? In GA are diners traditionally only open for breakfast and lunch?
Crankshaft: This new God’s Not Dead movie is gonna blow chunks.
FC: Thanks to his miserable cleanliness habits, the tapeworm says his feet are the same time as they were back in February.
Blondie is never gonna get grandchildren if you keep doing this, Dag. Why don’t you build a front porch with a glider swing?
Pluggers – For a plugger, “garbage day” is the day they paw through the garbage looking for good stuff to eat. Because they’re dogs! And bears!
Some watches have the day of the week expressed as an abbreviation on the side (MON, TUE, WED, etc.) and the people who would wear them would be Plugger age (my mother, 72, had such a watch though she’d look at her iPhone now like anyone else lol.)
It is valid to look at the side of your watch for the day of the week is all I’m saying. Valid cartoon, though I doubt any real Plugger would actually miss garbage day
@Bob Tice:
“I could tell you. But I’d have to kill you.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Why are you such good friends with Juan S. Perfil?”
“I think we have a lot in common”
“Juan is famous for being a movie star…”
“And you?”
“Well, I’m famous for being a lecherous rich bastard!”
Judge Parker:
“I have to say, Charlotte — you’ve got that Keane painting-like ‘waif’ look downpat. Whom are you going as for Halloween, anyway?”
“Nadia Comaneci!”
Pluggers-They should do what people in my neighborhood do. Put the garbage can out and leave it out.
Dustin-Meg knows how to raise people up.
MW-“We’ll have to be nice to Olive so she doesn’t send us to the cornfield.”
BB: The answer could be right in front of iyour eyes if you let it.
@ValdVin: re:Pluggers … or if they live in a city with more than one trash company and they have to remember which of their neighbours have the same trash day as them (yes, I’ve lived in such a place where you have to pick and set it up – so. many. different. utility. bills.)
Beetle~ I’ve never seen lower hanging fruit in my life.
@Peanut Gallery: Oh. This makes sense. I mean who wears low cut, short skirted evening dresses at a bus stop while cooing at passing men? Maybe the strip should be called Juan Abundio!
Pluggers is even more sad if you consider that while a Plugger almost certainly would own an analog watch, they equally certainly wouldn’t own a watch fancy enough to have a day-of-week complication. In fact, no true Plugger would tolerate a “complication” on any piece of equipment they own, especially if it means paying more for it. This Plugger is far enough down the dementia road that he’s acting out a gesture from his younger pre-Plugger days when he could both afford and desired better things. And yet, he apparently is still forced to live on his own.
Appropriate that Halloween is just around the corner; this is one of the most legitimately horrifying Pluggers entries to date.
@CanuckDownSouth: Saint Paul? We’re better now. First the city assigned each garbage hauler its own blocks with a single garbage day for the week. That went on for a few years snd now the city has a single vendor and each block got to keep its garbage day, and we pay through assessments.
Not quite to the point of having it rolled into our property taxes, but baby steps, baby steps.
MW: the boat suddenly changed shape and design between today and yesterday. Somebody call the Continuity Police!
The Plugger’s watch doesn’t need to tell the date. He hasn’t yet realized that he missed Garbage Day, and he’s thinking “It’s eleven o’clock. Why isn’t the garbage truck here yet? This is my only human contact!”
JP: So… it was just a “test”.. a TEST!! Well,YOU tell that to those dozens of *@$!%$# Squirrels clamoring outside our office! YOU tell them there’s no Dude Redux after all!
We had set up to do DNA testing this morning – we had hoped to add historical consistency and authenticity to the comic by casting an actual descendant of THE Dude for this wacky, yet charming, adventure. But all for naught. Intern, I guess you’ll have to go to the door and give ’em the news. Tell ’em they won’t have to interact with that creepy little juvenile – that should soften the blow… I’ll have the first aid kit ready…
@Ken: Doggone it, I think once again you figured it out before I could. If your theory is correct though, the raspberry-haired brat doesn’t need a dullard like Neddy to buy her plane tickets. She can just pull a Maculay Culkin in ‘Home Alone 2’ and contrive to get them herself with the credit cards she lifted from Grampa’s wallet while he was ‘too full of sadness’ to notice.
I’d say she just needs Neddy to read the note saying ‘Gone to find Mommy and Daddy. Don’t forget you owe me a pet squirrel!’ but we know Neddy doesn’t read, so I really don’t know what Neddy is even doing here, to be honest.
@2+2=7: Speaking of dullards… You are of course right, which makes this even more frustrating because as low-rent and contrived as it was, these past two weeks showed the Evansii making their ‘best’ efforts to do something even a little outside the box. A perfect opportunity to shake up the status quo, but nope, “It was all a dream….”
@Peanut Gallery: Jeez, I looked at some old Mr. Abernathy strips and the man gets laid like a carpet.
BB: Lt. Flap has an 11-inch penis.
@The Quiet Man:
which makes this even more frustrating because as low-rent and contrived as it was, these past two weeks showed the Evansii making their ‘best’ efforts to do something even a little outside the box. A perfect opportunity to shake up the status quo, but nope, “It was all a dream….”
It was a Wizard of Oz
whole-plot ripoffhomage, of course it has to end on a “it was all a dream… OR WAS IT?” bit. (Sad they omitted the “or was it” part. Heck, Wizard of Oz usually does it by a “And you… And you… And YOU were there!”, which would have been fun because it would have lead to Delta’s return actually being permanentwell, assuming the Evansii did anything with Delta returning, which is doubtful)It also was trying to say something about A.I., but heck if I can tell what it was?
… I kinda liked the “Emerald City => Eco-City” thing, but it’s weird the Evansii didn’t lean into the implications of that (ie, it’s usually revealed that the Wizard lied and that the city isn’t really green, he just uses tricks to make it appear so)…JP: Neddy to Charlotte: “Is this your way of having fun?”
Charlotte to Neddy: “I might suggest that making me eat the world’s most unappetizing-looking bowl of oatmeal is your way of having fun, but more likely it’s just incompetence.”
@richardf8: Noooo … this was worse. THREE garbage companies *simultaneously* could contract with the municipality (one near St Cloud) and so *each* one had a route through each street. You had to call, get rates, decide, get set up … and make sure you put out your bins on the day for *your* company on your street. Plus you have the added fun of a garbage bill completely separate from your water/sewer with the city. I think they’re now down to two options.
Luann: Luann’s time with Bernice is so massively uninteresting she fell into a psychotic funk instead of interacting with the Queen of Bitchiness sitting next to her.
JP: At first I thought Charlotte’s disturbing unchildlike behavior was just terrible writing. But now that I know she can behave like a child but chooses not to….well, frankly I’m a little terrified. It’s only a matter of time before she goes full Bad Seed on everybody.
Pluggers are so old and lazy that not only do they not have jobs, they don’t have any other activities and interests that would help them keep track of the days of the week.