Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 08, 2022

As one mother told her young daughter, “Normal is just a setting on the washing machine.”

One of my favorite conversations: a good acquaintance watching me and hubby at at SCA event. He’d just added an eyepatch and pirate hat to the standing deer archery target…

Her: “And I thought you two were normal.”

Me : “Define ‘normal’.”

Normal refers to any person that resembles George Wendt’s character from Cheers.

Normal is a (line) perpendicular to the curve at this point. (Radii are normal to the circumference of a circle, for instance).

Normal was the name of a school that trained high school graduates to teach grade school.

Normal is a statistical concept that’s abnormally hard to translate to your own life.

He’s always wrong because he always starts with a bad assumption. Who are these “people” and why does he think what “they” say has value?

Caulfield’s logic is wrong. A new normal doesn’t mean that it’s new. It just means that it’s new at being the norm.

Normal; the home of the original Steak & Shake.

When Tim Taylor found out that a new guy they hired on “Tool Time” was also named Norman, Tim said to his sidekick, “I guess THIS is the new Norm, Al.”

Normal is an engineering term that means “at right angles to the current condition”

Normal is something that happens twice in the same place and the same way. Three times makes it habitual and four makes it hysterical. :} )

Normal is what meets your engrained expectations.

Kids would always laugh when I told them I was born in Normal. That would laugh waaaay too much.

I think we had been seeing/living the Virginia Satir Change Model in real time.

Maybe Caufield should consult with the Vureau of Normalcy.

https://doompatrol.fandom.com/wiki/Bureau_of_Normalcy

Yes, but it was called that in 1867, too.

When I lived in Illinois, there was a joke that some people could only go as far as Bloomington, because that’s as close to Normal as they were ever going to get . . . (see a map if you don’t get it.)

Ah, Bloomington/Normal, IL. The only place where there’s a university at each end of University St. (At least that I know of!)

Let’s Just Say (tm from another list) that My Beloved and Darling Wife and I did our graduate work at Illinois State, back in the late 1970s

fusilier

James 2:24

Normal, Alabama. Home of Alabama A&M University.

If there was a Convent there, could it be connected to the Abby Normal?

Normal IL was named after Illinois State Normal University. A normal school is a teacher-training institution. When ISNU became a four-year and changed its name to Illinois State University, Normal stayed, well, normal.

Fun fact: Normal Illinois was the sister city of Eerie Indiana, location of the short-lived 1991 NBC TV series.

Normal is a dryer setting.

Coming back from Chicago to St Louis, I set my GPS to go to Normal, since I figured from there, I could find the way. But, when I went by it on I 39 and not into the town, my GPS spent the entire time back to St Louis trying to get me to return to Normal. My relatives thought that was pretty funny. Stupid GPS trying to achieve what no one else had in 77 years of effort.

A bell curve.

Shout out to the folks in normal, Illinois! You people making a new Normal?

Home to a bunch of Normal people.

If you want “normal”, look to the immutable laws of physics and mathematics. You sure as heck ain’t getting anywhere near it looking at people.

Hello. Just joined here. What is life always like in GoComics, anyways? I hope someone at leas answers my question.

Normal is a temperature of 98.6°F or 37°C.

(When I’m in good health, I always get readings of 97°F or thereabouts. I think that must prove I’m cool.)

My mother went to college in Normal for her teaching certification. She often said: " I went to barely a Normal college to become a teacher."

“Normal ain’t nothing but a setting on the dryer.” Patsy Clairmont

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can’t say.

Go Redbirds!

The “new normal” seems to be folks with neither experience nor authority declaring that something is the “new normal” of something.

There’s also a small village in Illinois called Standard. (I grew up not far from there, or I probably wouldn’t have heard of it. Most people from Illinois – especially central Illinois – have probably heard of Normal, though.)

New Normal could be a suburb of Normal.

I’ve been there!

The Bloomington Pantagraph columnist Bill Flick noted that the paper’s 40 year old headline “Oblong Man marries Normal Woman” was to happen again with the planned December 22, 2016 wedding of Elizabeth Guth (of Normal, Illinois) to Gabriel Madlem (of Oblong, same state.)

Ask the Normal brothers… Ab and Sub.

Call it an adjustment period as the routine changes like COVID normalized to endemic from pandemic. Like other diseases we get vaccines for years.

Normal: home to the second busiest Amtrak station in Illinois outside Chicago.

It is also the home of Illinois State University (the oldest public institution of higher education in the state). State Farm, Country Companies, Beer Nuts, and now Rivian Automotive are all in the twin cities.