I’m grateful for the good father I had. As I grow older and (in my own estimation) wiser I imagine that I can see more of the particular challenges that he faced, and the hurdles he both cleared and failed to clear. This passing-of-judgement in hindsight doesn’t mean I’m any less grateful for my Dad. He stepped up and did the Dad job the best he knew how. He was a great man, and I miss him.

He’s been gone almost 20 years now, so while there’s no emotional scab to be picked there is certainly a scar. I know its shape intimately, having poked at it for the better part of the last two decades. The scar is shaped like “what am I supposed to do in THIS situation, Dad? Oh. Right. No problem… I’ll figure something out.”

My Dad loved being a dad, and I guess that’s the part I always try to remember. Well… that and the fact that heart disease killed him at age 56. There’s a reason I’m kind of obsessive about staying fit and getting fitter — I love being a dad, too, and I’d rather not stop before I have the chance to see what being a grand-dad is like. But I digress…

That bit about loving being a dad… that’s the important part. If there are men in your life who are like that, let them know you appreciate them and the job they do. And if you happen to be one of those men, I bow to you in sincere appreciation of what you’ve undertaken.

Keep up the good work, Dad.

When we went to bed last night Sandra left her braids in, and yesterday’s braids were kind of a knotted, braidy bun at the back of her head.

Sometime in the wee morning hours Sandra and I snuggled together, her head resting on my right arm.

When I woke up this morning my right arm felt oddly numb. When I extracted myself from the snuggle I found that it was REALLY numb, and wasn’t working right.

In fact, it wasn’t working at all. The flexor system (make a fist, drop your wrist) was engaged, and the extensor system (extend your fingers, raise your wrist) was… gone? I couldn’t extend my fingers or raise my wrist.

Also, there was a set of near-bruised indentations in the crook of my elbow that seemed to match the knotty braid pattern from the back of Sandra’s head.

After about a minute of not panicking I managed to restore circulation to the sleeping extensor muscles. I expected the pins and needles to feel a lot worse than they did. Slowly the feeling returned and I was able to extend my fingers and wrist again. Yes, this was my right hand, the one that draws all the comics. Yes, I was frightened, but only a little. Mostly my brain was occupied with “how do I fix this” and “wow, this is kind of cool.” As of now, five hours later, there’s no trace of the problem.

What I’ve arrived at by way of conclusion, however, is “Sandra is not allowed to wear the evil knotty braid-bun to bed. And if she does, I’m not cuddling.”

I’m musing upon this pursuit I embarked upon nine years ago.

It’s kind of weird in that I don’t really feel like what came before it was real. Maybe that’s just me getting old (I’m only 41, folks, don’t panic or send me prune-juice), but the past seems to be further away than it used to. Not in the obvious, “duh” sense. I mean, of course events that happened in 2000 are further away now than they were five years ago. No I mean it’s like it’s accelerating. As if I’m moving faster forward through time than I used to, and the events of five years ago feel much more distant than events five years previous to a ten-years-younger me felt.

If you followed all that, congratulations. Maybe this post isn’t about musing upon my cartooning career. Maybe it’s about musing upon musing upon the past. It’s a meta-muse.

Which sounds like “Metamucil” when I say it out loud.

And that makes me laugh and think of prune juice.

This is what happens when I try to write my thoughts down before I’m done thinking them.

I met a veteran at the Scrapyard Release Party.

I should point out that there were probably several vets there, but this young man introduced himself as such, and pointed out that he got hooked on the comic while on tour in Iraq.

He asked me, in a quite goodnatured way, with no guile whatsoever, if my practice of sending free books to APO addresses was a marketing thing.

That was a tough question to answer, but today, Memorial Day, is a good day to write about it. See, no matter how charitable that act, the fact that it is good for my business will always call my motives into question. Whether or not I meant it to be good marketing, it IS good marketing, and that casts a long, long shadow.

The practice is a simple one. If an order comes in that is to be shipped to an APO address, Sandra and I put extra books in the box. We include cardstock bookmarks explaining ourselves. They read something like this:

Hey, look at that. A free book!

It’s yours because I respect what you’re doing to help me live in a free country. “Free Country” may not always mean “Free Book,” but for you and your buddies, today, it does.

I know that you’re part of the finest military the world has ever seen, and that you are a force for good. I know that you stand in harm’s way so that me and mine don’t have to. My prayers and the prayers of millions of others around the world are with you every day. We are thankful for your service, and humbled by the work you do.

Enjoy the book, and pass it around your unit. I fully expect it to be dog-eared, heat-warped, and hammered inside of two weeks. “Mint condition” is a waste of perfectly good reading material.

You can find more Schlock Mercenary online and it’ll always be there, so don’t worry if you don’t have internet access right now. Just be sure to come home safely. We miss you.

I asked this young man, this honorable veteran, whether he’d gotten the bookmark. He had, but he seemed to want to hear those words with his own ears. I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d written on the bookmarks, but I told him that the free books are something I do because they’re something I CAN do. They’re a gesture of gratitude, albeit a small one. I understand there is an epic level of boredom out there, with an underlying tension that is equally epic. If a good book and a good laugh dispels that just a bit, maybe for an hour or two, I feel like perhaps I’ve helped.

He told me that the extra books ended up on a bookshelf there in his camp, and were getting passed around pretty regularly. I was very, very happy to hear that.

He bought more books at the party, and I thanked him. But he and I both knew that I wasn’t thanking him for buying books.