Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 15, 2021

What a great potential boyfriend. He doesn’t want to embarrass her.

I’m so happy to see this series….I don’t know what I was doing when Mike met Kim originally but I totally missed it or forgot it (I’ve been reading Doonesbury from day 1)…I only see where they are now in 2020/21 in my Sunday paper!

It gets worse with time, Mike…just wait until the ’20s!

Another kid going for broke.

So she feeds her cat in the middle of the night?

Don’t be ashamed of your conversational deficiencies. The kids will just throw in a “Welcome Back Kotter” reference or something “Lavern and Shirly”-ish just to make you feel comfortable. However, if you go all “Three Stooges” on them and do the Curly Shuffle, you’re on your own.

You can tell them about Paul McCartney’s first band. And then explain who Paul McCartney is.

Is generational code just doing the upwards nod instead of saying a real greeting?

…and then you’re going where to do what?

Generational code? I’m still trying to figure out what “Heewack!” means, and it’s been 50 or more years since I saw it in a strip.

Remember the rule, Mike – if she’s not at least half your age + 8 years, it’s creepy. Yeah, I know where this is going.

Did Kim never have a cat after the two of them got together? That’s a shame. I’ve never seen a pet in the Doonesbury characters’ households.

How much older than Kim is Mike?

You might think coders would speak in operational code but mostly they communicate by grunts and belches, like other twenty-somethings. :)

Generational code is just pop culture references, mostly mindless twitter not worth interpretation. Like most things from most mouths.

I once had a Kim in my life, although it was her last name. Otherwise the resemblance is uncanny. She was Korean and it was the very most exciting relationship I was ever in.

Go for it, Mike!

we gen-Xers don’t have a code so much as vocabulary is hard, so we give up…

Wha, whan Ah was a young’un we hadda make do with smileys. We didn’t need none of them thar fancy mojios like today’s spiled kids!

Why feed the cat at three a.m.? And couldn’t the housemates feed it?

Gee, Mike, what about the 7-year-old human waiting at home for you, post 3:00 in the morning?

Note that her Housemates cannot be trusted to feed the cat.

Or, maybe even remember that there IS a Cat.

We’d never see a budding romance like this nowadays. Everybody woke is woke so woke scared woke to woke lose woke their woke jobs woke and woke their woke reputations woke.