Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 22, 2024

Alex doesn’t want to lose her camp ID like she did last year.

What’s a LanYard?…Sorry, Semi-Luddite here.

OMG! Doesn’t she think of ANYTHING but high tech??

I thought Python was all of Java and more.

Look up poet Billy Collin’s “the lanyard”

“I want to learn a foreign language.”

“You already have, Sweetie.”

The tug of war isn’t for her

Look up Billy Collins’ poem, “the Lanyard.” It’s wonderful.

JavaScript should have been one of the easiest languages for someone like her to learn.

“The Lanyard” is also a poem by Billy Collins, which is a small masterpiece of humor and irony. The poet reads it to us on YouTube. >

Making a lanyard is fun.

She’ll’ end up making a birch bark canoe

Don’t forget “world peace”.

I liked making lanyards, especially the hex ones. My dad had X-Acto Plexon in his dime store so I had a good source, My fine coordination made the lanyards terrible looking though.

A lanyard. By braiding those long plastic strips. I understand.

[She also wants to lose … um, her fear of DNS? of SFTP? her vir…oh, never mind.]

I don’t think Alex feels the same way about her mom, but this poem gives all the feels for those who do.

The LanyardBY BILLY COLLINSThe other day I was ricocheting slowlyoff the blue walls of this room,moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,when I found myself in the L section of the dictionarywhere my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelistcould send one into the past more suddenly—a past where I sat at a workbench at a campby a deep Adirondack lakelearning how to braid long thin plastic stripsinto a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyardor wear one, if that’s what you did with them,but that did not keep me from crossingstrand over strand again and againuntil I had made a boxyred and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,and I gave her a lanyard.She nursed me in many a sick room,lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.Here are thousands of meals, she said,and here is clothing and a good education.And here is your lanyard, I replied,which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,strong legs, bones and teeth,and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.And here, I wish to say to her now,is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,but the rueful admission that when she tookthe two-tone lanyard from my hand,I was as sure as a boy could bethat this useless, worthless thing I woveout of boredom would be enough to make us even.