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June 24, 2007
THOUGHTS ABOUT THINK BUBBLES
I once spent nine months writing a movie script about a working girl who turns her life
around; and as I typed the words FADE OUT, I saw an ad for the film Working Girl, and almost
fainted. Some people say, “There are no coincidences,” but these are the same PETA/tree
hugger types I automatically tune out. Why were there 11 other boys named Adam in my son’s
pre-school? Of course there are coincidences; the question is Why do they happen?
One of my comic strip obsessions is reading the funnies page and spotting “Two-ees.”
DEFINITION: A Two-ee occurs when two cartoon strips have the same joke on the same day.
Because I’ve been collecting Two-ees for so many years, people often mail them to me.
Copyright laws prevent me from purloining a few comic strips to publish here as Two-ee
illustrations, but imagine Blondie and Pickles both have jokes about men napping while
mowing the lawn on the same day. What are the odds?
How does a Two-ee happen? Why does it happen? How is it that two cartoonists living on
opposite sides of the earth come up with the same idea and it gets published on the same
day? (And I’m not talking about Christmas. Holidays don’t count as Two-ees.)
Can anyone solve the mystery of this comic coincidence? I think I can! Jack relentlessly
teases me about my theory. His theory (which he posits just to annoy me) is that “Two-ees
happen because cartoonists all subscribe to the same secret software which includes a
calendar with a different comic theme for each day.” Ridiculous!
MY THEORY: We all have hundreds of thought bubbles surrounding our heads. The bubbles
look like soap bubble hats, only invisible - of course. During the day while we go about our
business and move our heads, some of our bubbles break loose and float up into the
atmosphere, where they either burst or they bump into somebody else’s thought bubble.
Sometimes the bubbles kiss and separate and sometimes they stick together and mate. When
this happens, a Two-ee is born.
When a Two-ee appears in the Union Trib and both comic strips are printed right next to each
other – I call that phenomenon a Touching Two-ee and I consider it a positively cosmic event.
It proves my theory. It makes my day! If you spot a Two-ee, please let me know!
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