Boxcar!
The beloved Grandpa Jim (he said with a smirk) of “For Better or For Worse” had a stroke sometime last year, and he has been struggling ever since to regain his faculties. One of his many problems, one quite common among stroke survivors, is problems with expression: the brain damage that often accompanies a stroke can wipe out entire swaths of knowledge embedded in your cerebrum, and the results can be really hard to deal with.
When I was a teenager, and gobbling blotter LSD like it was penny candy, I would hang out at my friend Greg’s house where we could smoke pot with impunity, because his mom had no sense of smell. She was a recovering alcoholic, and at some point during her drinking she had taken a really bad fall down a flight of stairs, banging her head on a basement floor. She lost her olfactory ability, and a huge chunk of her vocabulary simply ceased to exist. Whenever she needed a word that she no longer knew, she’d default to “blue” or “milk.” “I can’t find the… the… dammit, the BLUE, the BLUE, I need the damn BLUE!” she’d yell, looking for the keys to the apartment or her purse.
Grandpa Jim is similarly affected: his word is “boxcar”, and it’s inspired all sorts of fun at the Foobiverse. We’re all so [boxcar]ing sick of Lynn Johnston’s lame story-developing skills,we could [boxcar]ing jump off a [boxcar]ing bridge.
So when you see this,
…understand that Grampa Jim means to say this:
And on that note, I have to get back to my [boxcar]ing lunch. I’m so [boxcar]ing hungry, I’d eat the [boxcar] out of my own [boxcar].
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
