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Kendra, regular version @kendrawcandraw.bsky.social ⋅ 11h
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Maggie Westrum @maggiewestrum.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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legit tho, spoofers
BESIDES the scammers targeting brown people on visas (don’t ask me how I know*), there’s also that one time someone called me asking why I called them and I didn’t bc I hate phones and CERTAINLY wouldn’t call a rando and I asked what number called them and it was definitely my number but absolutely NOBODY calls from my phone
*[ok fine it’s job stuff bc immigration and our brown people from overseas have a proper healthy fear of police]
also Hank should start playing PoGo like that retired couple taking over EVERY GYM here so that way no one has his phone w/o his knowledge bc GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL
I doubt it’s spoofers, and I doubt Hank thinks t’s provider issues.
Well, not complicated spoofers. “Use your husband’s phone to call your daughter” spoofers, however…
Simple enough, though, for Hank to check the call log on the phone. Even unanswered outgoing calls will show up … unless Carol has the presence of mind to clear the call log to cover her tracks.
Even if he knows, he could just be not saying anything in front of the offending party. Avoiding a fight.
He looks legit confused in the fourth panel imo. And Joyce-mama side-eyed him then pointedly turned away, which… having watched my parents on the phone before, that’s like EXACTLY the opposite of the usual reaction to calling your daughter’s phone and getting her roommate instead, saying weird things.
Mama’s been calling a bunch on dad’s phone, hoping dad is more likely to get answered than she is, is my guess. My mom’s pulled that on me before.
Plot twist! It was a butt dial during Carol’s secret twerking practice. That’s why it kept ringing again and again.
Wife looking at him while trying not to appear to be looking at him.
He looks at her with a raised eyebrow.
She looks away.
His eyebrows go to furrowed / frowning.
He definitely knows it was her, and is just trying to be polite. It is his wife after all.
Yeah, panel 3 is pretty clearly him realizing what’s happened and panel 4 is him making up an excuse to avoid an impending fight with Carol.
I thought maybe he doesn’t want Carol to know he’s been reaching out to Joyce so frantically.
Why would Carol repeatedly call Joyce using Hank’s phone? To gush about the “wonderful news” that the church group bailed Ross out with the help of a generous contractor? I presume the Browns still have a landline, so she could have used that.
Well she has to know that Hank’s the favorite parent at the moment so Joyce is more likely to answer him.
Also I doubt the landline thing. Even older, stodgier folks aren’t rocking those these days. My octogenarian grandpa doesn’t have one.
My family does. So do most families I know.
If he doesn’t want Carol to know, he’ll keep his mouth shut – she can’t hear what’s on the other end of the line.
Carol was probably using his phone to call Joyce because she, correctly, worked out that Joyce wouldn’t pick up if it was her and hoped Dad might have a better chance. If Joyce had picked up, she would’ve gotten a lecture or an emotional rant.
I had a lot of fun with the one calling me about there being a federal warrant out for my arrest. I kept asking for information to give my local AUSA when I turned myself in at the office. Where my spouse works. They hung up on me.
I like to string them along (without giving them an affirmative answer) until they hang up. Car insurance? Oh, I drive a ’74 Pinto. Chinese visa scam? You get the Winnie the Pooh theme song. I give the life insurance scammers Tim Allen grunts. Oh, you can lower my mortgage rates? I live in a van down by the river! My business is getting delisted from Google?Do you mean Joe’s U-Kill-’em, We-Grill-’em Crematorium, or Madame Joe’s House of Pain, home of the customer-comes-first guarantee? Replying to every one of their questions with “hello?” with different inflection is a good fallback if you can’t think of a good one.
My favorite was the time they tried to help me with by 72 million dollars in Diner’s Club card debt, because the scammer was mid-sentence when the call ended. He didn’t realize he was being played, but his supervisor must have.
I’ve noticed they’ve been calling less lately. Maybe that happens when they’re the ones who hang up.
but Pokémon is 3v1l
Dumbing of Age Book 10: That’s A People On the Other Side
If He’s Not Your Dad, He’s Just a Sixty-year-old Dentist
Dorothy is right, it is astonishing that Sarah knows how to smooth-talk with anyone on the phone.
Is this because of the phone keeping him at a distance or because she’s doing it for Joyce?
It gets a lot easier with practice.
She’s a 2nd year lawyer student, so that probably helps ?
I got better at phone when I stopped caring about the outcome
blither like an idiot? ‘sokay, nobody’s meeting me
Introverts can learn to talk nice to people on the pone. Phones provide an emotional distance that makes it easier to handle than speaking in person.
Joyce is 18, and Hank is 60, and Carol and Hank went to college together (at least in the Walkyverse).
How old is John, again? I know the kids’ ages are spread out, but that’s something else.
Probably early- to mid-thirties. John was a teenager in the bonus comic where Carol was pregnant with Joyce and they were coming up with names, and she said he’s been out of the house almost as long as she can remember (so probably a decade or more). I kind of assumed he was born either while or shortly after his parents went to college.
In the same comic, Jocelyne is a toddler speaking short sentences with rhotacism. She’s probably 3-5 years older than Joyce. If she went to IU, she graduated before Joyce started.
We know nothing about Jordan, but my guess is he’s closer in age to Jocelyne than to John.
Jocelyn did indeed go to IU as per meeting up with old friends at the game during family weekend.
No there isn’t. Ask any of those authors of “Get Off Your Damn Phone/Computer And Talk To Real People” articles/memes/whatever.
Carol… any ideas?
Replaced by herself from an opposite universe. Hank grew suspicious when she turned off Fox News and was caught humming a secular classic rock song.
Hank’s actually calling Joyce for theological advice; he’d rather keep this version, and isn’t sure if that counts as bigamy.
And we thought Anti-Joyce was odd enough.
Alas, any theological advice would be interfered by thinking about Rich Mullins.
Soggies will rule, after all.
Trust us, Dorothy, a calm and collected talker is the sound that sore ears, or anybody in particular, want to hear.
Also, ZOOMER
Meh, Zoomer’s really gone downhill in terms of service quality. Hank should get one of those new Ruttech VOIP phones.
Daniel here. I’m thinking the “This is only my second call in as many days” line is to throw Mother Zealot off the fact he’s been trying to urgently contact Joyce for a while. Mother here from memory still doesn’t think Toedad did anything wrong. Hank KNOWS Toedad is a threat to Joyce, Becky and potentially anyone who gets in his zealous way…
Yep, Mother Carol is on the “he didn’t really do that much/anything wrong” camp, tried to bail Toedad out of jail…
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/bond/
I don’t think so—Carol wouldn’t have heard “a dozen times”, so he chose to say that out loud.
I think Carol is the one who’s been calling.
I have heard people’s mobile conversations from a few meters away, having their volume up high. Unless she was trying to give Joyce a “great news, Toedad made bail with the help of a man named {Amber’s Dad}” phone call, “forgetting” Joyce punched Toedad good…
It’s a lot more likely that she could hear something on his phone, than it is that she realizes that Joyce is dodging her, but thinks she isn’t also dodging Hank.
The fact that it WASN’T Hank calling in a million panics makes me way more nervous than if he was, NGL.
I mean, it’s probably just Carol trying to get around Joyce not wanting to talk to her.
Carol is looking kind of guilty in the background there.
Agreed.
At my best guess of what it was…
So, Carol, you recognize Toedad was enough of a threat to your daughter you wanted to warn her he was out, but you still supported him getting bailed? Well. Isn’t. That. Lovely. (And if it wasn’t that… well.)
I imagine it has more to do with Joyce not picking up when her mom calls, and thinking that maybe she’d pick up if dad was the one calling.
Oh, sure. But she continued calling as him even after she realized that wasn’t working, which suggests she had more than a regular checkin to talk with Joyce about.
And hasn’t told Hank ‘I tried calling Joyce today several times and couldn’t get her, I even used your phone just to be sure it wasn’t an issue with mine somehow’ or the like. There are ways to spin that that Hank might buy. Which suggests to me she’s keeping it all secret, and has a particular reason to do so. (We don’t know HANK knew about the bail fundraising, do we?)
I think it was him calling, and he is playing dumb because Carol is there, and he wanted to talk to her about something Carol would not agree with. Namely, warning about Ross.
Yes, this.
That would work if he’s on speaker phone, but it doesn’t seem that way. His expression seems more suspicious of his wife.
You clearly don’t know an older man with a cellphone.
I can hear my dad’s phone on the other side of the fucking house.
Daniel here. I’m thinking it WAS Hank calling, he’s just covering his ass right now. I’ve been around mobile phone calls where I can clearly hear the other person on the line, despite the call not being on speakerphone. I’m waiting for him to try and warn Joyce through code somehow…
…And for it to go right over Joyce’s head…
But why would he call now while Carol was around, then? Surely he’d be placing the call when Carol was in the other room.
People do tend to move around their own homes. Started the call while nobody was around, Carol walks in, call finally connects, time for creative wording and walking & talking…
That seems like a lot of dots we’re supposed to connect on our own. Like it was him who called and he’s lying about how many times he called and his phone volume is loud enough that Mrs. Brown can hear it and she just now walked into the room vs he’s just telling the truth about not being the one who called. I think if she’d just walked into the room or if she could hear the conversation, Willis would have shown that so we wouldn’t all have to make so many guesses, ya know?
I mean then he would just not repeat the dozen times part, she can’t hear sarahs side of the conversation.
The call is actually an attempt by Mike to communicate beyond the grave. He could have just sent a text message but figures this will be more annoying.
Hmm
Hmmmmmm
Iiiiinnnnteresting.
Some people find talking over the phone impersonal, but for others, the very lack of face-to-face contact makes it easier.
I mean, Sarah is also studying to be a lawyer. It’s not that she can’t talk to people, it’s that she doesn’t want to.
Oh yes. I’ve done tech support and customer service for years (up to and including a stint with the Australian tax office), but put me in front of an actual person and I’ll go silent and awkward in seconds. Other end of the phone people I can handle (I’ve been yelled at by the best and never responded with more than a polite acknowledgement that I understand their frustration with the situation), but in front of me people? Don’t handle that at all well.
Well the look Joyce’s mom had sure wasn’t suspicious at all; noooope
Neither was the movement of Hanks eyes.
*”Can’t Do A Thing To Stop Me” continues*
Can I request, “Break My Stride”, next please?
So is Carol the one trying to secretly call Joyce? Probably to guilt trip into something like the shitty parent she is.
“Ross is out and he’s coming for Becky. If you really care about her you will not stop Ross from saving her immortal soul.”
I’m gonna suggest it was to [i]casually[/i] ask if she knew where Becky was, so she could tell Toe-Dad.
Carman
But does this Carman whistle?
Props for Carman shirt and ref.
Okay, so either Carol’s the one calling or Hank’s lying through his TEETH because she’s in the room.
99.999% chance of the latter.
I’m actually betting on the former, due to his expression of what looks like actual confusion, and her turning away. Usually if you’re overhearing your spouse call your daughter, ask if they’re OKAY, and express confusion? You don’t turn away, you come closer and try to listen to hear what’s going on.
Also my mom has 100% pulled the “call me from my dad’s phone because I’m more likely to answer for him than her” trick before in the past.
I expect we’ll hear one way or the other in the next couple days. If he knows, he’s telling once Carol’s out of the room and Joyce is on the line. If not, well…
Then we have issues.
Choice 2 has my vote…
…And not just because Daniel the Human thinks he’s quietly panicking about Joyce and Becky…
His first line does seem a bit more ‘I have reason to worry about Joyce’ now that I look at it again, yeah.
Think it’s option one myself. Look at the expressions: Hank in panel 3 is more “Wait, what the fuck?” and panel 4 is more “Carol, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”
Yeah, I think that’s still where I’m leaning – Hank could’ve easily gone somewhere he knew he wouldn’t be dealing with Carol if he’s been calling and wants to cover, and what he’s choosing to repeat seem like odd choices if he’s not genuinely confused and figuring it out. We’ll see, but I’m actually inclined to think he might not know about the bail raising – he was absent in the strip where they were talking about it and Blaine came in, and well… I could see that absence being deliberate on the church’s part rather than Hank’s as well.
But he called Joyce, so if he had to say something in private, he would’ve just called at a different time/place, right?
I’m pretty sure it’s the second one. I’m assuming Hank wants to tell Joyce about Ross getting out of jail but knows Carol wouldn’t approve if she hears him.
Dammit. I was expecting Mary to be the next big bad.
sitting here on the counter = no butt dials.
But, really, you can check call logs on any phone. Carol.
Hank is a dentist?? Given his attitude toward Dorothy that kind of makes me worried for his patients.
I don’t imagine he talks religion with them, or at the least, isn’t worrying because they’re not friends with his daughter.
That said, he has loosened up a lot since Joyce stood up for Dorothy, changing his outlook some.
At the same time, if he has a big cross hanging in his waiting room, pretty much all his clients are going to be Christian and ok with chatting about God.
Yes. I do my best chatting about any subject when my mouth is wide open and someone else has their fingers between my teeth.
I’ll never understand why some dentists think I’m in the mood to talk while they rummaging around in my mouth.
They want to keep you busy with something besides what they are doing in your mouth. My dentist nowadays has a monitor above the seat. When he is not using it to look at data, it plays music videos just in my line of sight.
They’re related to the restaurant servers who time their cheery “how is everything?” to the exact moment you’ve just started chewing on a big forkful of entree.
I know a surprising number of fundamentalist Christian dads who were dentists. More than one were dads of homeschool friends. It’s kind of a thing. A weird thing, but nevertheless – a thing.
I wonder if part of it is that many dentists make good money, enough so that their family can live on one income so that their wife can homeschool the children.
My dentist is a fundy, but in over thirty years (his fundie dad, and now him) we have never talked about religion.
I see Sarah has already perfected the customer service tone.
carman
Screw Carol with farm implements. Hank knows she’s part of a murder and attempted kidnapping. Well, possibly a murder. Well, a serious injury. And Hank is afraid to let Carol know that he knows as she is the type to axe-murder for Jesus.
Which is the name of my Belle and Sebastian cover band, but Imma not go there at this point.
I think Hank may discover that he needs an oil change in the next couple minutes so he’ll be right back. So, roughly, July in Roundworld.
“Axe-murder for Jesus” is a really great name for a band. But who are Belle and Sebastian?
The Disney Princess and the Crab?
The pianist Emanuel Ax jokes that he and cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter together form the Lizzie Borden trio – aka, the Ax Ma Mutter trio.
How would anybody back in La Porte know about Mike yet? Are Toedad and the Blaine sending hourly status reports back?
For a moment there I thought I had posted something without knowing it!
Ok….All is not well in the Brown Home….can Carol be an honorary member of the bad Dad’s legion?
She was part of bailing him out of jail. Doesn’t necessarily mean she expected he’d do what he’s doing now, but it wouldn’t make her really much less culpable, given what he did to get in jail in the first place.
Given what he did to GET in jail I don’t think anyone could really believably claim to not expect him to do what he was doing last we saw him.
He didn’t do anything except want to raise his kid right!
Extremely Far Right.
Carol’s definitely been on my list of Abusive Parents Who Aren’t Supervillainously Evil Dads for a whole now, along with Linda Walkerton. (I also take a dim view of the Wilcox parents and the Siegals, off the top of my head.)
President of the LoED Womens’ Auxiliary.
Carman. Wow. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in many years. Not since I was Addicted to Jesus.
…. so if he has to extract a tooth, does he call it the old Hank-Yank?
(No, not like that. Pervs.)
Rich Mullins, now Carman. Wonder if we’ll get a Jars of Clay reference sometime.
Let us not forget the DC Talk reference at the dorm party. Yes, those people were, in fact, singing “Colored People”.
Willis, don’t invoke Yoshikage Kira. I am warning you. He is worse than Blaine, Toedad and rapist mc scarface because he can detonate your corpse and leave no physical trace. Don’t summon him, Willis.
implication the mom’s been calling
or implicaiton that Evil Dads have a spoofer number?
I’mplication that either the mother’s been using his phone to contact her wayward daughter, or the father is lying about multiple calls, because the mother can hear both ends of the conversation.
If the latter, Mr. Brown, there’s this little invention called the text. Great for warning your daughter, asking for a call, not a text, for confirmation of receipt, and erasing said text from your own phone afterwards.
I swear (or affirm) that I did not send the previous from a cell phone.
I have no idea how that apostrophe got in there.
Joyce’s dad is sixty? My first impulse is to scream, “NO WAY!” Then I recall that my own father was 38 when I was born (and he was 40 when my sister came along). Add to that the fact that Joyce is the youngest of four siblings, which means (since she is eighteen) he very easily have sired her in his early 40s.
I’m 54, and my youngest son is 16. So…
My father was fifty when I was born.
My father was 46 and my mom was 41 when I was born. And I was an only child.
We know there’s a big age gap between the Brown siblings, so it’s not too surprising.
I’m only a year older than Joyce at this point (almost 2) and my dad’s the same age
He’s sixty?
Joyce’s dad aged well.
My dad was a month away from 50 when I was born. My sister had kids at 16. Everyone is different.
I don’t have kids at nearing 30. I’m more of a if I find one then I’ll raise it type.
Place yer bets, was Carol calling from Hank’s phone or is Hank trying to hide the fact he’s called a dozen times? On one hand I figured it was him calling but I’m confused why he’d feel the need to vocalize the “dozen times” part
My money’s on Hank calling a dozen times. And if so, it’s a very bad sign that he is now aware enough to conceal it from Carol.
He could have just not said that out loud, though. Carol can’t hear what Sarah is saying. He had to tell her first in order to deny it.
Why do you think Carol can’t hear what she’s saying. Most cell phones will let you hear for a good distance.
If the room’s quiet and Hank keeps the volume turned up, she’d be able to make out at least part of what Sarah’s saying.
So, I was wrong.
Carol was calling. I dread that this means we will discover a darker side to Hank.
Easily Carol. She’s calling from Hank’s phone because she knows that, at the moment, Hank’s her favorite for being nice to Becky and Joyce is far more likely to pick up her phone for him than her.
Emphasizing the “been sitting here on the counter since yesterday” definitely points towards it being Carol, since it establishes opportunity.
If he’d be stealthily doing it, he’d want to keep the phone at hand in case she called back and butt dialing would have been a better excuse if he’d wanted to make one.
Nothing is what? NOTHING IS WHAT?!
Nothing is everything, and everything is nothing. Eat Arby’s.
Oh, so someone who is not Hank has been trying to call Joyce from Hank’s phone? Someone in the house? Maybe someone who helped the man who threatened her daughter with a gun out from jail? Someone who’s feeling juuuuust a tad guilty?
as she should, Carol!
You really think Carol is capable of feeling guilt?
I think panel 4 says yes.
No, but she has been shown to be self-aware enough to protect her own kid.
To feel guilt you have to believe that what you did was wrong. She was worried and upset to hear about what happened but also blamed Becky rather than the adult with decades of experience at adulting who deliberately took a gun to a college campus and pointed it at her youngest child. It was an awful situation and all but Ross was motivated by love and concern for his child’s eternal soul.
And sure yes seeking an early death is bad and all – but dying means you get to party in Heaven with Jesus so Carol would have gotten over it? Maybe? (Not a Christian but the “Only the good die young”/”They were so perfect they’d already earned their wings”/”Nothing to grieve here: they’re in a better place” type comments don’t sit great with me. I can appreciate how they may have been comforting back when having a family with 15 kids where at least 5 of them wouldn’t make it to adulthood was normal, but these days, not so much.)
But maybe she’s a bit concerned that the dude they helped bail out of jail hasn’t been around since, and she’d like to hear her daughter’s definitely safe?
Oh my god it was Carol trying to warn her
Why not send a text from her own phone. Or Hank’s.
Anyone trying to warn Joyce would have sent a text.
Carman? The singer? Or is this a sign that maybe Hank has a separate persona, like Amber or Josh?
I assumed it was Cadman the opera.
But what about Mike?! I’m dyin here.
Hopefully Mike isn’t though.
Prediction: No one will ever mention Mike again; it will be as if he never existed. The Anti-Monitor has been defeated, but at terrible cost for the multiverse
Ah, you see, Hank has only called once per each of OUR days. He is starting to slip from Joyce’s Reality into ours
It Has taken us ten years to get to mid-terms…
Y’all, please go see Sonic if you want a good movie experience. I watched it. I loved it. I’m seeing it again. I’ll see it every day it’s out, if I can manage to. Even the duller parts are inoffensive and charming enough.
Y’all, please don’t go see Downhill if you want to have a good day that’s free of avoidable triggers. You can remember your parents’ messy divorce arguments on your own, you don’t need Will Ferrell’s help. It gave me actual flashbacks to some of the worst times of my life and when I got home, I had an episode and fell asleep without even taking off my coat or belt. It’s not a good time, please take better care of yourself than I did.
*support via light online contact*
Hank is definitely only saying that because it’s not safe to be honest right now. Not with Carol in the room.
I’m going with Hank didn’t make the calls. He looks legit confused. If he was making the calls then he’s telling a provable lie about where his phone was. No reason to go there. Did mom think about toedad and realize she should remind Joyce to stay away from sinful Becky?
So, Joyce’s mother has try to call her daughter using her husband phone? Interesting… Maybe she wanted to say to her what stupid thing she has collaborated to done and now there is a dangerous man, associated with another dangerous man, that want to kidnap her best friend and probably doing other very nice things.
Why do I get the feeling Sarah’s lawyering classes included How To Talk On The Phone as an important topic?
My guess is since it’s not Small Talk(tm) and she’s not talking to someone face-to-face she’s having an easier time with the situation.
hmmm
The real only question is has Hank been calling a dozen times to warn Joyce about the Legion of Evil Dads, or has Carol been calling a dozen times to yell at Joyce AND/OR tell her really excitedly that the Legion is coming as though that’s a good thing and tell Joyce to get out of their way?
*stare at Joycemom*
Sarah’s over-the-phone speech bubble matches her shirt. Have we seen this technique before?
A few times. It’s best seen in the phone conversation between Jocelyn and Joyce during Halloween.
I’m on the fence as to whether this is Carol calling or Hank covering for himself, but I do want to think that Carol’s been resistant about switching providers and so he brings this up whenever she’s listening to his phone conversations
Carol needs to see a cranial specialist . . . her eye is migrating to her left temple. Must be one helluva growth going on inside her sinuses.
It is a result of the radioactive waste chemicals in the water, the same ones that caused Becky’s eyebrows.
Is no one going to comment on Sarah’s brilliant customer service smile? No?
He’s 60? That’s older than I would have guessed.
It might be Joyce overshooting, but she’s also the youngest of a whole brood, so who knows.
42 isnt that old to have your 4th child, particularly if her father has an age difference with her mother.
Sarah must be the opposite of me. I have no problems asking a random person for directions, but I HATE phone calls and try my best to avoid them at all costs. I think it’s because I can’t read the other person’s body language over the phone and it weirds my brain out.
I understand that, very well. Trying to parse/infer body language from vocal clues is hard, … Doable, but hard.
damn, the blocking and facial expressions in this strip communicate so effectively!