Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly for November 17, 2019

Don’t run, Dick. Don’t jump either. Too risky at your age.

It was many decades afterwards that I learned that the mind-numbing “Dick and Jane” books were part of the “look-say” movement of teaching reading. Much as I detested most of my elementary school teachers, I am grateful they still implicitly taught phonics.

Wonder what happen to Alice & Jerry? (the books me and my cousin used to read). They must be pretty old themselves by now!

Dick and Jane’s Grandchildren collect Social Security.

RePugnantcans refer to Social Security and Medicare that you have been paying into almost all your life as “Entitlements.” They also refer to large handouts to already wealthy people and institutions as “grants.” So if you ask for what you are entitled to your needs will be downplayed and derided, and that can be taken for granted.

Jane finds spot. Doctor says spot is cancer. Out, out damned spot.

According to Wikipedia, Dick and Jane first appeared in 1930. They’ve been collecting Social Security for a while now.

With their royalties they don’t need Social Security.

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I cringe to think what parochial values and biases those books taught us. For all our sakes, Dick and Jane are better off dead.

and Spot and Puff have been dead for many many years

See Jane, she has a walker. She walks in her walker, walk walk walk.

See Dick in his mobility chair. He gets it stuck, push, push, push. He runs over peoples toes, ouch, ouch.

89 years later, I’d say they were eligible.

See Dick dead. See Jane bury Dick.

See Jane frolic at the old folks home.

See Dick roll over in his grave.

Dick and Jane are living in Florida next door to the Bobbsey twins, Nan, and Bert ( the younger twins Flossie and Freddie Bobbsey live in Sun City, Ariz. )

I can only hope I live long enough to collect, collect, collect what is owed me.

Archie, Veronica, Betty, Jughead & Moose are very likely in the same senior care facility. That was a pretty good comic. It could’ve been turned into a hypothetical sitcom called “Friends”.

Until my Jane died then, sad, sad, sad.

But Dick and Jane never really had a job, they were to busy chasin’ Spot.

Darn those leaches wanting “stuff”.. hard to justify tax cuts when the Dick and Jane’s keep running up the national debt.

Sally is living with her life partner, Vera. And Spot and Puff are now living on a farm upstate.

Did Dick and Jane marry? And to each other? No one has said.

My sister taught Kindergarten for 2 years in the late 60’s. The first year, the kids came in not knowing any any letters of the alphabet. That year Sesame Street came out, and her next year’s kids came in not only knowing the letters by sight, but also their sounds and were able to figure out how to read some simple words using phonics. The Cookie Monster vs. Dick and Jane, eh?