Agnes by Tony Cochran for December 02, 2022

“sad is the new normal” – indeed

Some of those appliance boxes made the best sleds, forts and other creations we as kids conjured up.

This made me sad.

I read comics not to be sad.

This does not compute.

Relax Agnes, it’s all downhill from here.

It’s not as sad as the severed flap of a cereal box

I marvel at your skill, grace and beauty, Oh Great Queen of Sleds.

I was on the nightly new once, when I used a piece of cardboard as a sled. That was in the late 50’s, in California. A bunch of us teenagers went to the mountains to play in the snow after the first snow. The news crew was there filming a lot of people. I was amazed to see myself on TV.

let’s not make a flap about the poor box…

Agnes – future winner of the gold medal in skeleton.

When I was a kid in the 50’s we used an old car hood for a sled. It worked fine.

Hard to be the Queen of Sleds without a sled.

I used – and loved – a Flexible Flyer; I prefer to be able to steer (especially seeing as how there was alley at the bottom of our yard*, and water at the bottom of both of the bigger hills we frequented).

But the kids at the local college swiped trays from the dining hall. Packed the hill down nicely, so I could go even faster.

*Sometime we wouldn’t turn; if the barn across the alley had its door open, we’d just jump off the ±3’ bank, be airborne across most of the alley, and end up in the barn.

It seems to me that if Agnes can successfully navigate that thing down a snow-covered hill, she’d get some positive attention — maybe even some marveling. It also seems to me that, considering Agnes’ talent for misfortune, the next panel will more likely show us a tangled mass of Agnes, snow and box flap at the bottom of the hill.

When I was a kid in the 70’s, we used a piece of wood paneling, shiny side down….man, it was great!