Remember how good it was back in the day? Things used to be much simpler, innocent, and more fun. Don't you get that nostalgic feeling when you reflect on your childhood? No matter the decade or era, seemingly everyone has this little pearl of a memory inside their hard and ragged adult hearts.
Probably touched a string in your heart, and the memories started flooding right back? Good. Now you're in the perfect mood for Crabgrass Comics which brings its readers back to those "simpler times," the '80s. The choice for the decade is perfect; the era screams "nostalgia" to many—the dawn of the digital realm, the optimistic and upbeat cultural zeitgeist, well, almost anything can spark a warm memory. So take a stroll down memory lane, and sigh as you emphatically remember your own childhood. Oh, and by the way, they're so engaging that you'll probably want to read the first part, too!
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I can just imagine a kid nowadays learning of this and wondering how to warm up their thermometer with an LED bulb.
Omg I tried this once! I had the presence of mind to shake it like crazy until it came down to 100 and that extra effort made me look exhausted on top since it maxed out to past the 108F mark. 😂
Amy stone Chandler I can vouch that by the early 80's rectal thermometers we're NOT used on 7-8 yo!😂
No no this kid has it all wrong! Ur supposed 2 say u have a bit of a sore throat and ask 4 some hot tea with lots of honey but if anyone asks, make sure u say ur fine and can go 2 school. THEN like a half hr later u gotta say u started feeling nauseous so u ended up not drinking the Tea. Now u have 2 choices- u can actually drink a tiny bit of tea to slightly raise ur temp so wen ur mom checks, it'll be higher OR wen ur mom leaves to wait 4 the thermometer 2 finish, u can dip it in the tea so u can watch it go to the exact temp u want it. This way, if u kno ur mom is the kind who will sit and wait with u while the thermometer is in ur mouth, u can choose the option of sipping some tea b4hand so ur temp will already b raised and it wont matter if ur mom doesnt give u time alone 2 tamper w/the thermometer. Used 2 miss a lot of school due 2 chronic anxiety so I got pretty good at this kind of thing till I finally was diagnosed & put on meds
Want a parenting tip from the '80s, parents? Here's one in the example of the artist. "I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I was lucky enough to have a mother that supported my art. That’s so important for young artists. Just having someone encourage them to keep it up." Tauhid gave a few good tips to aspiring comic artists himself. "If there’s anyone with dreams of being a cartoonist, my only advice is that the main ingredient is time. You’ll get better at drawing. You’ll get better at writing. You’ll eventually build an audience. The only thing you HAVE to do is keep at it and give yourself time."
He supplemented us with even more wisdom in a follow-up interview: "Make as many comics as you can, share them with as many people as you can, and make your art easy to find. Opportunities only sometimes come from the thing you’re working on now. They just as often come from the thing you did years ago that made someone remember your name."
Grounded for being right... Yep, that's called "every child's everyday life."
I got grounded bcuz my mother didn't/ doesn't believe that water drains in the opposite direction south of the equator. Because Im such a notorius liar. Also 'lied' about the southern hemisphere having an aurora borealis called the aurora australius, because I obviously made up the name. At age 16. Mom repeatedly told the police she had 'no idea' why on earth I'd ever runaway. ( after 16 yrs of taking her bs I had enough!) Getting grounded for being 'right' was the norm, not the outlier. Ha! out-liar!
We didn't get grounded for being right. That was called "back talk" and not only did we get grounded, usually got a cuff in the head or mouth
Learn the hard Way …. Don’t be smart with Dad,when Dad is not so smart😩
Lol guess he needs to exercise that brain a little more since he doesnt even know its an organ, not a muscle
Actually the brain is neurological tissue, part of the nervous system, very different from muscular tissue. The point is that both need exercise - use it or loose it.
Load More Replies...Big things are brewing up for the comic, so be on the lookout. As the author said in an interview, he "just finished up the first Crabgrass book which should be in stores later this year. I’ve also been preparing for the newspaper launch which happens March 28th. I’m pretty excited about how things are going but I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet."
I used to think kids conceived by accident were boys and planned kids were girls based on the small sample of me and my siblings
It was the opposite in most places for far too many centuries. Still is in some places. Unfortunately. Oh and of course they blamed the woman. Even though it's sperm that decide :)
Load More Replies...Big things are brewing up for the comic, so be on the lookout. As the author said in an interview, he "just finished up the first Crabgrass book which should be in stores later this year. I’ve also been preparing for the newspaper launch which happens March 28th. I’m pretty excited about how things are going but I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet."
I went to a small school in rural East Texas, USA. My graduating class was 24 people. My 11th and 12th grade Math class was Saxon "GTA": Geometry, Trig, and Algebra III... It was a 3 semester course and the final semester of senior year was supposed to be intro Calc or a free period.... Anyway, We had a classmate that was struggling the final semester and we were getting very little help for our core group because the classroom was also shared with the Academic Math Meet team of our grade (year) in the same classroom at the same time, so they pulled all of the teacher's focus after she gave us the most basic overview of the lessons. We were required to do the odd number problems to #50, because the even number answers were in the back. She (classmate) was failing, we were all stressed and not doing very well either, so the teacher made a deal with us and swore us all to secrecy. She would pass us all with it least a 70 every marking period if we left her to focus on her math team.
We also had to promise NOT to take a Math course the 2nd semester of senior year so that she could focus on Spring Math meets and State Math Competition with her team.... Of course this gave us all an excuse to not even try and effectively lowered all of our GPAs and knocked a couple of us out of our rank and prevented our graduation with Honors 🤷♀️🤦♀️
Load More Replies...My grandmother showed me a trick with the 9s table. Say you want 9x4. Hold up hands palm facing you and count to 4 left to right starting with the thumb. Bring down the 4th finger. There's 3 fingers to the left of the held down finger and 6 to the right. 9x4=36. It's the 7 and 8 tables I had trouble with. 😺 =^..^=
My Elementary school (Grade 4) teacher would have a way to discipline the class by assigning the class to write out the multiplication tables, maybe four, five or six times. A fellow student and myself decided to write them out ahead of time for the next occurrence of discipline. A few days later, someone in the class was "acting up", so our teacher again told the class to write out the multiplication tables. The two of us immediately took out our sheets, walked up to her and handed them in completed. I thought we were so smart. She must have had a chuckle on this one. Score, teacher 2, students 0.
Note: he said "times table" always what multiplication SHOULD be called😉Gen X rules!lol
"Crabgrass is just the latest of several attempts to create a feature and find an audience over the years. I chose to make it about two best friends and base them on myself and my best friend as a kid. I think that personal touch is what helped it resonate more with people than my other comics did. But over time, Kevin and Miles have evolved so that they don’t really resemble us much at all. Characters sort of develop themselves after they’ve been with you a while.
I like to think about my comics as a fun reminder of how innocent, rotten, and just plain confused we all were as children," said Tauhid when asked how he would describe his comics. "Artistically, I like my style to be as organic as I can. I do everything digitally but try to hide that fact as much as possible. From a writing perspective, I try hard to at least make myself smile with each strip. The humor is important, but sometimes a poignant moment is just as important."
I probably should have figured out that I wasn't entirely neurotypical when a bottle of jolt actually relaxed me.
Load More Replies...When they hit teens, it becomes what we called "swamp juice" mix all the crappy booze we could steal and mixed it into one drink. Some people called it "jungle juice" cause people would start climbing and swinging from trees.
God I grew up in the 90s in the US. It seems like it was really fun.
"I always like the Simpson’s method of storytelling where the beginning of a story gives no clue where it’s going to end up. The more I write for Crabgrass the more I find myself asking what unexpected twists I can cram into the story. As a result, I don’t do a lot of planning. I just take the story in a direction that excites me."
I once had to break the news about not all cats are females to a 23 year old... Bless her heart
Once I asked my aunt and uncle "if roosters are boys and hens are girls, what are chickens?"
We have dogs and birds. Most birds you can't tell the gender unless you do blood DNA test. The few we did know were all boys. All but one of our dogs were girls. So we automatically call all the birds he and all the dogs she. That got a little confusing when one of the "he" birds decided to lay eggs. At the vet I was calling the female "him" because I'm so used to it. The vet looked at me with a concerned look and said "I think I need to teach you basic biology and that girl birds lay eggs, not boy birds." I said I'm not an idiot I'm just so used to calling her a him for a year that it's stuck. Poor bird gets called everything. She doesn't care at long as she's spoiled. I could call her a lizard but she'll still come running for a head scratch.
But the author doesn't believe in the "kids these days" attitude at all. "Kids these days aren’t that different than kids when I was growing up. They just have phones and the internet. They still play outside. They’re still in an absurd hurry to grow up. They still think they’re invincible. But, if there’s one major difference I think they are more acutely aware of the future. A defining quality of being a kid has always been the inability to see very far into the future and kids these days have been robbed of that a little. I don’t envy that about their experience. But I also think it equips them to have a better impact on tomorrow than previous generations."
When the kids make a short term truce to keep them both out of trouble. Yep. Been there!
Take some time and appreciate how well-executed these comic strips are. The narrative lines are interwoven, but all of it is encapsulated within a strip that has an entertainment value of its own. But Tauhid took years and years to refine this particular skill.
"I’ve had plenty of time to carve out my process. The strip has been in development for two years but I’ve also been creating comics for almost 20 years now. By the time I started Crabgrass my groove was pretty well established."
I have ALOT of freckles. Used to let my kids play "Connect the dots" with mine with washable markers. Once, my daughter did this with permanent while I slept. Lol
lol nice. there's a d**k van dyke show, episode with basically the same premise. rob falls asleep on the sofa. so Richie and a friend conect the dots on his back. and ot was a cracked library bell.
Load More Replies...All tattoos are temporary. Temporary in the sense that one day the wearer will die.
Hairspray will clean permanent marker better than soap and water does for washable markers. Great life hack to know if you've ever been a victim for permanent inking lol
Aside from his impressive creative job, the author is very normal and down to earth. His hobbies consist of "mostly just video games and binging Netflix, if those can be called hobbies.
Until recently, I worked as a freelance graphic designer, but now I work on Crabgrass exclusively for my living. I went to Murray State University very briefly on an art scholarship, then didn’t do anything art-related for quite a while. I got my first art-related job as a graphic designer for a local custom apparel shop in my mid-twenties. I stayed there for about 5 years and when that place closed, I began working at a slightly larger custom apparel shop, which I stayed at for almost 7 years. I ultimately left that job to work for a friend who’d started an online media company. I got to draw comics, help design video games and do a ton of web design. It was a blast, but that too ended when the company was bought out. No matter what job I had, though, I was always working on some comic or other and sharing it online. After the media company gig ended, I decided to take a real stab at making comics my career. It wasn’t long before I started Crabgrass and saw more success than I’d ever had with a comic. Two years later, I’m still doing it and the audience is still growing somehow!"
It would be more cyclic if the baby had crapped its pants leaving the parent with some sh!t to deal with, but I guess the bunny was alright too.
Load More Replies...It makes sense for teenagers to sleep a lot, this is so pointless.
To be honest I have seen this my whole life. But I also wondered why no one thought like me to be aware of where you choose to warpath. I was mean to my brother 12 year gap. I feel terrible about it.
Pay it forward usually means a good thing-guess I never thought nasty stuff too 😞.
Hey, look, an alt older sibling who is lazy...WHO HERE IS COPYING ME?
They both got cake, i don't see the problem 😅 sounds like Krystal needs a talk about people having different difficulties.
Again, that assumes one was smarter than the other, when the grades might have just been a reflection of applied effort. In which case, mom giving an *equal* reward to the lazy one, just for being slightly less lazy this time, is a message to BOTH kids that they don't need to work as hard as they should.
Load More Replies...Motivated kids that get A's are sekf- motivated. Sometimes a child who gets the C average has worked twice as hard as the kid who got the A's. Effort should always be rewarded.
I'm a teacher and I know my kids who work super hard and still only max out at a C or B. I'll sit them down in private and tell them don't get discouraged. They are learning to work hard and persevere and to not give up. I'll tell them I'm just at proud of them as the ones for whom this comes easy. Then looking back on old FB accounts from kids I had 10 or 15 years ago, I'll see those average grade hard workers now have great jobs like engineers at NASA or pilots. They learned to fight and to study, while some of the ones who got As easy peaked in high school because they never learned how to study correctly for a master's degree.
Load More Replies...I wish my mom did this more. I was the “dumb” kid but whenever I did better she would just say stuff like “you’ll just do bad again” instead of encouraging my efforts.
Man, I'm sorry she didn't realize what a gift she has in you. Her issues are not yours, though. You are more than what happens to you. Thrive.
Load More Replies...What Crystal does not understand is that while straight A’s are her best, a C average might be Kevin’s best. School is a huge struggle for some kiddos. Different expectations for different kids. Maybe a “report card cake” isn’t the best incentive. Maybe something else is more appropriate.
The classic participation trophy. Why try when the reward is the same?
Yet they are not the main reward is the A also why not give your best? Do the participation medals in races take away from those winning them? Or motivate more people to run 5k? If one child is running 2:10 on 800m the boy say when they are teens if the girl is slower. Only the one should be recognized? The mother should not recognize the difference in talents between her children?
Load More Replies...I can relate with the girl. She's working so hard to get high grades and the mom just acts as if it's nothing! It's annoying! Does anyone know how hard it is to keep straight A's!?
That's assuming the grades are purely a measure of applied effort, when maybe one child is just smarter then the other and good grades just come much more easily to her. Maybe she always works less and gets more, and it's just killing her that Mom is correcting that this time. 🙂
Load More Replies...I'm from Mexico City, drive is way more than a war here
Load More Replies...My friend and I swapped parents for driving practice and it instantly became so much easier.
I have social anxiety with adults. Not kids and teens. So I became the default driving teacher of the neighborhood for about 10 yrs. Adults looking in my direction? Freak Out! "AHHHHH!" Teenager driving off the road? "Without jerking the wheel you're going to want to get the tires back up on the street, okay?"
My son gets his full license this month. I will show him this lol
My heart goes out to him. I got mine in October.
Load More Replies...My late father's favorite driving lesson? "If you hesitate, you die." I still can't turn on red without hearing him say that!!
My dad would tell me to turn at the last second, and get mad when I didn't fling us into the parking lot going 40mph. My mom freaked out when I'd get within 6 feet of another car, in our neighborhood.
awww, reminds me of when i was a kid..then my mom would claim i cheated :/
I had one of those families that though D&D and similar games were actual devil worship. No nintendo, wasn't allowed to watch Simpsons... and constant lectures about how I should be like the other kids. (Oh, but i had to give 2 weeks notice if i was having friends over... no problem there though. No one ever wanted to come over a second time and i wasn't allowed to go there.) Obviously I'm sooooo well adjusted now....
Load More Replies...I sure hope not. That many minis on the board would make a combat take hours in D&D, and kids don't usually have that kind of attention span.
Load More Replies...Reminds me of when we would break out the monopoly board. My siblings came to hate me....lol
The "as soon as nobody's around, I'm going to beat up my child" look
Load More Replies...For us? It was usually "wait till your father gets home!" In retrospect-not fair to him...
this is about the '80s - emancipation deeply ingrained already.
Load More Replies...Ah spicy food. The excitement, the rush, the euphoria while the food is in your mouth and you anticipate the swallow, the coup de grace. And then the anguish, the torment, the regret, when it comes out the other end.
The other day my friend had put hot sauce on his pizza thinking it was ketchup, and then proceeded to put jalapenos on it as well. He ate the whole thing, but his face was red and he was coughing by the end of it.
So glad my kids never did this. I'm still traumatized from my siblings doing this to me
This was fun doing it to someone and annoying as hell when it was done to you. Iol
Whatever you say will bounce off me and stick to you cause I'm rubber and you're glue!
They are violet. It is however possible the word purple didn't exist when the poem was created.
Load More Replies...roses are red, that much is true, but violets are PURPLE, not FREAKIN BLUE. ;)
I am a nanny and I tried to explain to the teens and tweens I take care of about waiting 6-8 weeks for shipping and Handling. Oh and a time before Google. I got blank stares.
I use kickstarter. I have waited YEARS for some things.
Load More Replies...Not a mall, this is part of the wrestling series. But point taken
Load More Replies...It was me. I was the girl who drew horses all day. I didn't actually care about horses, but my best friend did and she'd be like "oh! Can you draw me one with a pink mane and purple wings?!"
I’m like you! Except with dragons. My notes and notebooks are all full of doodles of dragons
Load More Replies...I have been so engrossed in the comics that until now I haven’t commented or read any other comments. By far the best Comic-Con ever!
How... How'd you do that... I didn't read ANY comments until THIS. VERY. ONE... How!?!?
Load More Replies...Just for reference, this one is actually the middle of a long serial, and the mascot head one was the epilogue to it. Basically, Kevin's dad promises to take him and Miles to a wrestling championship but bails out on them. Gene decides to take them. While there, he's sucked through a door by a mascot. The mascot reveals it is empty, sort of like an FNAF animatronic, and that there are other mascots with it. They try to turn Gene into a mascot, but he manages to escape. He tells one of the wrestlers but when they investigate Mascotopia, it is just a janitor's room, so they assume Gene had just fallen asleep and had a dream. In the above epilogue, they get an unknown package at home containing Gene's mascot head, hence why he exclaims they need to move.
Oh, right. I remember hanging pictures! ...I thought he was going to take a hammer to the TV for some reason.
Load More Replies...I have lots of friends who aren't just the parents of my kids' friends. I just don't actually get to see them anymore...
Unless the main teacher is away often or if she got a raise and is now the main teacher.
Load More Replies...This reminds me of how a few weeks ago, I put my pants on inside out by accident and didn't realize until I had already gotten in the car. (I didn't get naked in front of anyone, though.)
Boom! Discovered out in public without clothes😄😆 ; by the school kids no less!
He's one of the wrestlers at the match they're at.
Load More Replies...If you read the 60 comics they didn't show, it turns out the Maxine bully sent him a card meant for someone else, which hurt his feelings. So redhead's friend bullied Maxine to apologize to redhead.
Load More Replies...If they were going to post these, they could've done it in order for the storyline...
Pretty sure they did, originally, but since readers can vote, they get out of order.
Load More Replies...They get ranked according to how many likes each one gets
Load More Replies...I've actually never seen my parents like in the last square. ;-;
That was my dad growing up lol. Even the smallest nudge would set him off.
I wish my dad was like that. Apparently just because I'm in trouble, any crying I do, when he is YELLING at me, is for pity and to escape trouble and punishment.
Load More Replies...Having it out of order makes this a bit hard but I think I understand this bit finally
Ya, it's a little confusing, but I've invested alot of time in this strip now, so I'm all in 😀
Load More Replies...Was it utterly necessary to ruin this funny and cute comic for us?
Load More Replies...I have a jar of Hershey's Kisses on my bookshelf, if y'all want it.
Godzilla is known to destroy everything in his path, like buildings. So when the joke starts with walking into a bar, it means that he destroyed it. Then continue to destroy a library, coffee shop, etc. So the joke will continue with mentioning all the things that he could destroy when he "walks into" buildings. I hope I was able to explain it.
Load More Replies...Ha! My boy was hiding under a rack of built in shelves, in the garage. Was on verge of panic calling police when I finally heard him giggle.
He's gonna be so bummed when you have to tell him "ninja" isn't actually a job he can get when he grows up.
Load More Replies...Permanent markers are not really permanent. Alcohol can remove permanent ink or it will eventually fade given time.
Reminds me of the first time that I counted back 9 months from my birthday and realized that I was conceived before my parents' marriage. I was told yesterday that I'm the main reason they got married in the first place.
But as a child you loathed with every fiber of your tiny being...
Load More Replies...I think these are meant to be in order. They relate to each other, but they're all mixed up
They probably were in order when the author first made this, but they move from the greatest amount of upvotes to least as more people read and upvote. it is kind of annoying, though.
Load More Replies...check it out on https://www.gocomics.com/crabgrass. It's on hiatus while he works on his backlog for being in actual newspaper syndication, but you'll get to see the storylines in the correct order and without bits missing. (The wrestling line was a lot of fun linearly).
Oh thank you!!! I LOVE comics and graphic novels. I'm going to check this out now!!
Load More Replies...The art stile reminds me of Bill Waterson (as well as some of the writing stile). And I love it!
These are really really good, I enjoyed reading them. Please do put them in order for easier reading.
I think as people upvote, they move positions on the list.
Load More Replies...I read these a year ago and loved them, but I wasn’t able to find them again for so long!
I think these are meant to be in order. They relate to each other, but they're all mixed up
They probably were in order when the author first made this, but they move from the greatest amount of upvotes to least as more people read and upvote. it is kind of annoying, though.
Load More Replies...check it out on https://www.gocomics.com/crabgrass. It's on hiatus while he works on his backlog for being in actual newspaper syndication, but you'll get to see the storylines in the correct order and without bits missing. (The wrestling line was a lot of fun linearly).
Oh thank you!!! I LOVE comics and graphic novels. I'm going to check this out now!!
Load More Replies...The art stile reminds me of Bill Waterson (as well as some of the writing stile). And I love it!
These are really really good, I enjoyed reading them. Please do put them in order for easier reading.
I think as people upvote, they move positions on the list.
Load More Replies...I read these a year ago and loved them, but I wasn’t able to find them again for so long!
