218

Butt butt bus
Posted on April 13, 2022 by David M Willis

218 thoughts on “Butt butt bus”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Walky’s a butting genius here

    a practical renASSance man

  2. The Wellerman

    ???

    ???

    Quite the challenge / pleasure being born with butts disease, huh Willis?

  3. King Daniel

    DON’T STOP BILLIE-VING

    HOLD ON TO THAT JENNIFER-LING

    1. fridge_logic

      I love this so much!

      Though I think the second line could roll oh so delightfully with:
      HOLD ON TO THAT JENNIFEELING

      1. Acher4

        STOPSIGN, PEOPLE!!!

        HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMPK!

  4. Taffy

    Tiny Sal is adorable.

    1. True Survivor

      They are all adorable when their tiny – just alligators and sharks.

    2. Thag Simmons

      Always has been

    3. ThunderNight

      Small Sal

      1. King Daniel

        Smal

        1. True Survivor

          Thank you. This made me laugh.

        2. Taffy

          The Smallkerton twins

  5. Suet

    He sure has retained that word too much

    My, what a peppy entrance

  6. RassilonTDavros

    YOU SHOULD HAVE BUSED HIM WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE, CHARLES

  7. True Survivor

    The flashback panels are shaded blue because they are always sad. Let’s see how this goes from “oh no, baby Jennifer is a little neglected” to “Oh my god, why can’t Willis let a single character have a happy childhood?”

    1. The Wellerman

      What you reckon the odds are that Dina’s childhood has at least a little heartbreak?

      1. Thag Simmons

        Dina is the one Dumbing of Age character allowed to have a happy childhood with not-evil parents

        1. RassilonTDavros

          I mean, Dorothy’s seemed to be mostly okay. Aside from Danny’s mom apparently being creepy around her, though I can’t find the specific strip.

        2. The Wellerman

          It’s not the good creepy, is it? ?

        3. Clif

          Define good creepy. Please. Because those are words I have trouble parsing together.

        4. The Wellerman

          Like the kind of energy you get from goths or emos. And basically every animatronic in FNAF.

        5. drs

          Addams Family.

        6. Tan

          Please know that, per a fair and neutral judging, you have won this argument.

        7. The Wellerman

          Thanks SO MUCH for reminding me the old version of this existed!!!!!

        8. Needfuldoer

          60s TV series Gomez and Morticia are a relationship goal.

        9. thejeff

          Definition of good creepy aside, no, this was very much not good creepy

        10. Thag Simmons

          True. Definitely upper end of the scale

        11. RassilonTDavros

          Several days late, but here’s the strip I was talking about, re: Dorothy.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/prepaid/

        12. ValdVin

          Not also Sierra? She seems happy, almost happy-go-lucky, and her parents really care for her.

        13. zee

          Well she grew up some flavor of ND and children are evil so, speaking from experience even with good parents she was probably bullied as a kid. I mean literally everyone is. Some of her teachers might not have been great either

      2. King Daniel

        Dina’s moment of childhood heartbreak was when she learned that it is, in fact, impossible to break causality without also breaking the universe.

      3. Matthew E Davis

        One time her parents did not let her watch Jurassic Park and she could not find the words to express her displeasure.

        1. Thag Simmons

          One time her dad called Dimetrodon a Dinosaur

        2. Taffy

          He also pronounced it “DIME-tro-don”, like the coin.

      4. Ob

        Are you kidding? She had the biggest trauma of all of them, when she found out that dinosaurs are supposed to have feathers, and that she was lied to for her entire life by everyone around her.

        1. someone

          Is it a lie if it’s mistaken information? To me, a lie is an intent to deceive or mislead. That’s why you can lie even while telling the truth (e.g. lie by omission). Since people genuinely believed for a loooong while that dinosaurs to be featherless like modern lizards (they’re named “dread lizards” after all, not “dread birds”, that’d have been “dinornis” I suppose), it was not a lie, but a mistake.

          And well, one shouldn’t assume that all dinosaurs were feathered. We know from fossils that scaly dinosaurs were a thing, too. Like the allosaurus for instance. Could they have had both scales and feathers? It’s not ruled out, but there are no known evidence for it yet.

        2. Opus the Poet

          Birds have both feathers and scaly feet, so yeah, it’s a thing.

    2. anon

      well i think she did first say waaay back then that her parents just gave her money instead of affection (i mean tbh i would’ve preferred that myself /shot)

      1. Thag Simmons

        And I’m guessing Nina couldn’t pick up the slack, although s’probably not fair to expect her to

    3. C.T. Phipps

      Baby Jennifer’s dad wasn’t neglectful! He sent all of the homeless people in town to be execu….err, put on a farm upstate.

      Just for her!

      1. Thag Simmons

        Statistically at least some of the people who ship all the marginalized folks another town over are probably decent parents

        Or at least present ones

        1. Pilgrim

          In my experience it’s the people who are thoroughly convinced of their own goodness who are most likely to commit evil — for the greater good, of course.

        2. misanthropope

          watch the fuck out for capital-g “Good”

    4. Ana Chronistic

      Carla’s was pretty happy

      behind a payall tho

      1. Thag Simmons

        She had good parents but it still sounds like it was rough. Plus, this comic and this comic read to me like Carla’s transition was part of a major and relatively high-profile legal battle.

    5. Seregiel

      Sierra, Carla, Dorothy, Dina, Mike except for teachers, pretty sure what’s her face that’s Walkys current gf, and pretty sure the Mandy’s are all safe. Walky got golden childed and is only just now seeing the harm. There’s definitely neutral too.

  8. Sirksome

    Good to see Charles being an absolute mid yet again. Like I would even prefer him to be more unlikeable instead of the complete nothing he is.

    1. True Survivor

      I don’t know. I like that Charles’s problem is his apathy and lack of real interest, it makes an intriguing and believable antagonistic character. I think that a lot of the evil in the world, and lot of the bad parenting, arise not because individuals are malicious but simply unwilling to confront the problems around them or interact meaningfully with their kids. Charles exemplifies that, I believe.

      Also he is a grown man in sweat pants and an unzipped hoody walking his far better dressed children to the bus stop. You have to admire that level of dedication to not caring.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I don’t even think Charles is apathetic. I think Charles has a much worse problem of actively ignoring there’s any problems whatsoever and dedicating himself to believing life is good.

        After all, he did worry about how much Marcie’s surgery was going to cost to look it up.

        1. True Survivor

          Good point. Willis does seem to have a bone to pick with blind optimism (That outlook certainty hurt Joyce or those around her in the past) so it makes sense the author would go that route.

        2. Seventh-Sandwich

          Dunno if looking up Marcie’s surgery cost really counts as a point in his favour. Children getting injured is a pretty universal “Oh shit” moment, he’d have to be downright evil to not care about something like that. Even then, it’s not like he did anything active to help her, not even something as simple as stopping his wife from taking Sal’s savings.

        3. C.T. Phipps

          Actually, we know that both his wife and the school principle immediately stopped giving a shit about Marcie’s traumatic injury the moment they found out she was undocumented.

        4. BBCC

          Did we ever get confirmation on that? I know Charles googled it but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are – he could very well be assuming (especially given the Walkerton’s issues).

        5. C.T. Phipps

          I mean the Principle of Sal’s school said it first.

        6. Yumi

          He said she might be. The question is if we ever got confirmation that Marcie is undocumented.

        7. BBCC

          What Yumi said.

        8. Sirksome

          I honestly think it’s more interesting if we never know for sure. A detail like that is relatively insignificant to the plot of the story so far, so unless we get a long Marcie centric storyline, the mystery is more intriguing. Maybe Marcie and her family are completely legal citizens, (and in a very on brand for the adults in this comic action), the teacher made a really shitty assumption of a minority, because it was a bigger priority to protect the rich white kid.

          I personally think Marcie’s probably a dreamer or even just born here a full citizen no questions asked.

        9. BBCC

          That’s not what Charles looked up. He looked up whether or not ‘illegal immigrants’ (a word choice that’s only going to get more of an eyebrow with the sliding timescale) could get health insurance. One implies more concern than the other.

        10. C.T. Phipps

          Yeah, it implies “dangerous naivety” like Billie has.

      2. Sirksome

        Walky also apparently inherited the inability to tie shoes from him. Although I will say I’d probably be the sweatpants dad if I had children. Like if I ain’t gotta work that day why should I be dressing up? Cause I’m an “adult”? That’s one of the perks of adulthood, you get to dress how you want on your time off. Of course that assumes Charles even has a job. He actually gives off strong male-wife energy.

        1. True Survivor

          I just figured that as it is a bus stop, all his kid’s friends parents would be there and he would want to make a good impression. I agree its unfair and unpractical – we should all have the right to one day enter a cocoon of ancient college basketball team sweatshirts and emerge in our true form as sweat-pants parents, resplendent in our comfort and secret lack of undergarments.

        2. khn0

          It may have to do with the sliding timescale, and tying shoes not being a 2008 parents’ thing. Heck I could have been a dad then, and not a very young one, and I don’t like to tie my shoes. I just don’t own any sweatpant, that around that time were also not giving a “social loser” vibe anymore…

        3. GeekyWarrior

          I agree with you about Charles. I mean my mom was dressed pretty casually as she was focused on getting us kids ready, not really giving a crap what other parents were doing. Now Linda would very likely find offense with his attire as she did care about putting on airs.

          What is more interesting is the way Walky and Sal are dressed. Walky appears to be casual already with some sort of short sleeved hoodie? (Hard to tell with the blue) and Sal is dressed like a model school child.

          I would be willing to bet Linda helped Walky and Sal get ready. And Linda’s shit is starting already with Sal having to be the perfect princess while Walky gets to be a kid.

      3. Matthew E Davis

        At the risk of Godwinning a thread, there’s a reason why Hannah Arendt called evil banal in her book _Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil_.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          Oddly, I read a Jewish rebuttal of the “banality of evil” thing saying that it demeaned the Nazis crimes to say that they weren’t incredibly horrible crazy people. They just got called boring bureaucrats because that was their attempted defense and it caught on.

        2. Thag Simmons

          Yeah a lot of Nazis were decidedly not banal in their evil, besides being able to present as banal

        3. khn0

          Godwinnning or Godwining?I recently read a book about how nazi management generally evilly overdid what they were asked to, not just bc of apathy (there is a chapter of Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi’s book about how it was to be black in nazi germany saying that his communist Viertel couldn’t do shit against nazi repression), but also bc the general idea of managing resources that way lead to a performance culture that didn’t took into account what was real/the point as long as you got passed the objective given.

      4. Otl1973

        I’m not sure why the sweatpants thing is a problem for you. I wore shorts and t shirts when I walked my kids to elementary school (it was only about 2 blocks), while they were “better dressed”. They had a school dress code and had to be at school pretty early, while I didn’t and didn’t need to get to work early. (Even 30 or 40 years ago, jeans and a t shirt and getting to work at 11 were fine at tech startups, at least in south Florida.) Hard to see how that equates to not caring. That’s not to say he did, just that this wasn’t necessarily an indication.

        1. Taffy

          Yeah, there’s really no reason he should need to wear a suit and tie to stand at a bus stop with his kids. Getting them on the bus without injury is a little more important than “looking good” at 7am. Any other parents who’d get all uppity about it, well they weren’t worth impressing anyhow, so who cares?

        2. BBCC

          Yeah, the Walkertons have never been particularly fancy dressers honestly. Linda’s usually happy in a sweater and jeans.

        3. Taffy

          Ah, but it’s a tasteful sweater and jeans. A proper suburban housewife sweater and jeans, you see. Because she’s respectable and doesn’t make a scene, you see.

      5. drs

        I don’t see the kids as “much better dressed”. Especially Walky.

        1. thejeff

          I was thinking that we can see where Walky got his style from.

      6. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

        Nailed it.

    2. Pilgrim

      Charles has appeared in a grand total of 18 comics so far, mostly just to be the butt of that day’s joke. So naturally you’d have total and complete insight into his motives and personality.

      1. Sirksome

        I don’t know. The only dad less interesting than Charles is maybe Ethan’s dad. The guy most known for saying sex is like drinking beer. You don’t like it at first, but eventually get used to it.

        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/blunt/

        Actually, y’know this might imply that dude is asexual….Never mind he’s still somehow more interesting than Charles!

        1. Fay

          Honestly, I thought the joke there was that Ethan’s dad is also gay but so deep in the closet he hasn’t realized you’re supposed to be attracted to your partner.

  9. RassilonTDavros

    In all seriousness, this is going to be heartbreaking. I can already tell.

    1. The Wellerman

      “I just KNOW something BAD is gonna happen!!!”

      — Courage the Cowardly Dog

      Now, that’s what we thought about last storyline, yet here we are.

      1. True Survivor

        Come on, the flashbacks are shaded blue because the cast all had such great childhoods. Also, first panel of new story line so you have to set up a conflict, which requires a problem which requires pain.

    2. Sirksome

      Time for the tragic flashback where they all got hit by a bus, miraculously survived, but were scarred in ways we didn’t even realize until now was trauma!

      Walky stopped saying “butts” in all his sentences which is an obvious downgrade

    3. RassilonTDavros

      Trying to figure out how old these guys are, here. They look taller than the ones in Sal and Marcie’s first meeting, but I’m gonna chalk that up to art style changes since the twins clearly already know Jennifer in that scene.

      …I think this is the very earliest in these kids’ timelines we’ve ever seen.

      1. Sirksome

        I’m gonna guess 5 at the oldest. Walky’s talks about the same as my nephew who is at that age. It’s that age where kids know how to talk but also don’t.

        1. SuperZero

          Just like an adult!

        2. Norah

          I’m guessing 5 too and that they’re starting kindergarten.

        3. BBCC

          Right, Americans don’t have junior kindergarten. That was my thought, which would put them at about 4 or 5.

          I think y’all call it nursery school?

        4. Yumi

          Preschool?

        5. Yumi

          There are a lot of terms that probably mean slightly different things regionally. Around here it basically goes daycare-> preschool-> pre-K (if there’s distinguishing pre-K; I don’t think there was where I went, but I was very small at the time).

        6. vlademir1

          They can also have slightly different meanings within the socioeconomic class hierarchy. For example here ‘preschool’ oft has an implication of private, non-compulsory education for 2 to 3 years prior to kindergarten intended to give upper and upper-middle class kids a head start on both the structured learning environment and socialization/networking while ‘pre-K’ has an implication of private with some aid available, more open socioeconomic entry, and a stronger focus on the structured learning environment for just the final year before kindergarten.
          ‘Daycare’ meanwhile is effectively treated as just the alternative to private childcare (such as a nanny or stay at home parent) for those with fewer socioeconomic advantages and some daycare facilities also handle preschool and pre-K services on site.

        7. BBCC

          No, preschool is a different thing here, for kids too young for junior kindergarten. I think “Pre-K” is probably closer.

      2. Needfuldoer

        Yeah, they were toddlers in the “Sal meets Marcie” scene. Now they’re 5 or 6.

        Is this a retcon?

        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/secretagent/

        1. Sam

          Um. I hate to break it to you, but literally in the author comment it states they are five in that strip. So this is likely shortly preceding that.

    4. Thag Simmons

      We got a one-two punch of flashback Billie chapters, so probably

  10. Cephalo the Pod

    I feel like David Willis has gotten a lot better at writing little kids in the past few years, for obvious reasons.

  11. Yumi

    God, I’m here for this.

  12. Stephen Bierce

    *plays “The Way We Were” on a passing car’s radio*

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Needs more Barbara Streisand.

      1. The Wellerman

        How about “Brother My Brother” by Ralph Schuckett?

        1. The Wellerman

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEC7tPPKAXQ

  13. Jamie

    Bus bus bus bus

  14. C.T. Phipps

    Speaking as a former child with some…behavioral issues…I wonder if Walky has some undiagnosed conditions that their mother ignored in favor of blaming Sal for everything.

    Also, why are Sal and he being broken up?

    1. Nono

      They probably just get randomly shuffled into separate classes, doesn’t seem like a big deal.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I dunno. I’m fully prepared to believe that Mama Walkerton insisted on Sal getting sent to a class for discipline problems from the very beginning.

        1. Sirksome

          I feel like this one might be fishing a bit. Like sometimes the simplest solution is correct. Kids do get shuffled around. It can be for as mundane a reason as alphabetical order, and Walky’s name is David which comes before Sally. I know Linda’s an asshole, but you don’t need to search for reasons to vilify her. Let her thankfully brief appearances do that.

        2. Nono

          Isn’t alphabetical sorting done by last name, though? If they were doing that they’d both be in the same class.

        3. Sirksome

          That was just an example. It probably doesn’t apply but the point was it doesn’t have to be an evil scheme by Linda who apparently could be believed to antagonize her daughter at age 5. It could just be a mundane administrative reason they split up. Or even as many below have said on purpose so they socialize and don’t distract each other. It doen’t have to be because “LINDA BAD!”.

          But yes alphabetical order was a bad example.

        4. Rabbit

          Not to nitpick, but we’ve seen her in subtle ways, chosing to blame/scold Sal from a fairly young age when it’s easy to think she would have praised Walky. (like the last flashback to the playground.)

        5. Azhrei Vep

          During the short time I was in the same grade as a pair of twins, they were always in different classes. I always just assumed that was a thing schools did when possible to avoid them teaming up and being a pain as much.

          Or, more graciously, to push them to broaden their social circles apart from one another.

        6. Twitcher

          I’m a twin. I was in separate classes from my sister most of the time. I think it’s a socialization aide.

        7. BBCC

          Yeah, I hate defending Linda (and also I HATE Linda) but this seems far fetched. Even if “Sally’s issues” were apparent by now, I feel like she’d want to hide them so she ‘doesn’t look like a bad mother’.

          Not all twins get in the same class.

        8. Needfuldoer

          Narcissists need a scapegoat to leverage control over.

        9. BBCC

          Yeah. Linda gives me the vibe she has the same expectations for Sal as Walky (no ‘she’s the bad one so put her in easy math’ here – Walkertons take this class) but judges her differently and blames her for things Walky does too or worse. Scapegoat ahoy.

        10. Fay

          In fact, sometimes they’re intentionally separated so they branch out to other kids more, rather than clinging to each other.

        11. Uly

          Not without a diagnosis she didn’t.

        12. Taffy

          Hehehehe. Yeah, okay.

        13. Tan

          I don’t see Linda actively pushing (at this point) Sal into the ‘discipline problems’ class. I could ABSOLUTELY see Linda making a big fuss about getting Walky into the ‘best’ class, and making no such push for Sal.

        14. Taffy

          Good point. Why assume malice when we can instead assume neglect? Also, fuck Linda in general. (But only from behind, so she can’t see you making silly faces at her the whole time.)

        15. Throwatron

          I love how Walky is here in full-blown unmitigated echolalia stimming, with no adults present doing *anything* to help, and Sal already acting like a model child, and yet nobody considers that it’s Walky who is the one getting moved to a…special class.

          It also makes sense for Sal to just be a perfect little angel all the time; her mother is spending all her narcissistic energy funneling every resource and fragment of attention she has into the boy, because from her perspective, being a woman is all about finding the best man you can find, and full-bore micro-managing his life since that is a woman’s responsibility in this society, and the only way a woman can attain any power, is by maximizing the potential of a feckless male, and bearing his offspring. Thus, Walky’s clear and present behavioral problems are fine, but they also frustrate and exhaust the Nmom, so she puts all he expectations that she feels she “has” to let go of for her son, because he’s “different” and it would be “unfair” to hold him to those expectations, and puts them on the daughter; after all, girls are supposed to be perfectly polite, mature, and responsible all the time; it’s what girls need to be to survive, and how God designed them; there’s no amount of pressure which can be put on Sal that’s too much, because from her mom’s shitty perspective, being hyper-responsible for everyone and everything around you, is what “womanhood” is entirely about. She’d probably love to be this hard on David, but David has intrinsically more value because he is male, and thus he needs to be coddled and managed by women, so that a good woman finds him and can continue maximizing his potential for her gain. She’s scared of damaging or fucking up her son, because her son has inherent value which can be ruined. Girls don’t have that, and in a patriarchal society, smart women know that. Some respond by trying to make the situation better; others compete with and cut down other women, and naturally treat their daughters than this is normal.

    2. Yumi

      Pretty common to put twins (or other siblings in the same grade) in different classes if the school is able to, at least in elementary school.

    3. anon

      IDK about that (tho i think someone speculated about him having ADHD?), but most of the time you can’t really choose which classes/teachers you get assigned to unless it’s a really small school to where they’d all have the same teacher

    4. David M Willis

      it’s pretty standard to do that on purpose, trust me

      1. The Wellerman

        Wait, just who’s breaking them up again?

        1. alongcameaspider

          The school is putting them into different classes

          Why is anyone’s guess, could be random (though given Willis’s comment above thats not likely), could be to try to get them to socialize outside their family, could be separating people that know each other to cut down on distractions

        2. Geneseepaws

          The schools usually separate twins, so they don’t feed off of each other’s emotions – either good or bad. The teasing can lead to unnecessary drama.

        3. The Wellerman

          So it appears the education system in this part of the planet is aware of the shear brain power of human twins working in tandem. Pity. ?

    5. Uly

      Schools usually prefer to put twins (or other students who live in the same household and are in the same grade) in separate classes if they can – the idea is that they develop better if they’re forced to interact with other students rather than just their sibling, and also if the teacher has to see them as an individual rather than one of a unit.

      This is VERY common, and parents who don’t prefer it can expect to argue with the school about it every single year.

      1. Arian

        In Australia in the 1970s, they tried to put my twin brother and me (female) in different classes in Year 1 (the second year of school, after Kindergarten), but my mother objected, and they put us back together. She never had to say anything again.

        We did also have identical twin sisters and their very-close-in-age younger brother in our year, and one sister was put in one class, and the other sister and the brother in the other class. If there weren’t only two classes, I think the school might have preferred to separate all three of them.

        I can see why it might be easier to put identical twins in different classes, but the same issues shouldn’t arise with fraternal twins, and especially not different-sex twins.

        Maybe the school doesn’t want twins to be seen as in direct competition.

        1. Azhrei Vep

          I figure they’d probably do the same with any siblings of sufficiently-close age to end up in the same grade. Just to keep them from being less of a distraction to one another, to minimize their chances of teaming up to be a pain in the ass, and to force broader socialization on them.

          But these are just assumptions. I thankfully had a solid eight years keeping my sister and I in completely different schools and eventually homes.

    6. Thag Simmons

      Walky definitely has undiagnosed ADHD

      1. Needfuldoer

        Agreed.

        Undiagnosed, of course, because nothing can be wrong with Linda’s golden child.

        1. thejeff

          Don’t be silly. We can clearly tell just from their behavior in this strip that Sally’s the one with behavior issues.

    7. zee

      Well 1) it’s pretty much commonly agreed fanon that walky has undiagnosed ADHD until Willis confirms it in comic, 2) siblings are always split up in school. I think it’s a socialization thing, making sure they talk to the other kids instead of sticking together

      1. Thag Simmons

        Mike says it outright at one point

    8. Ereb

      Twins get split up all the time, because they want you to “become your own person” and individualize. Although I’m pretty sure it’s also so that others don’t treat them as the same one-brain-two-body-clone-child-duo.

      1. Roborat

        Also, in the case of identical twins, makes it easier for the teacher to know which twin they are talking to.

  15. Kyle Voltti

    In my mind Walky and Sal’s Dad is voiced by Tim Meadows

  16. DailyBrad

    Aww, little Jennifer/Billie was already like this, I see.

  17. Bryy

    I’m not quite sure if I’m ready for a Billie arc.

    1. Yumi

      Don’t worry, Jennifer stuff is just going to happen in the background while Becky and Dina fuck some more.

      1. The Wellerman

        You mean sleep fucking? I dig it.

        But I’m still holding out for Becky’s dream being like the Matrix and Dina teaching her how to dodge spoons in cinematic slow motion! ?

      2. alongcameaspider

        A little salty about Sarah barely showing up in the storyline that had her name in it?

        1. Lion

          To be fair, that’s probably how she would have preferred it if she had gotten a say. xD

        2. thejeff

          She saw that the story had her name in it and fucked right off to another school for most of it.

        3. Taffy

          Personally, I’m quite happy with how much Sarah we got in that chapter. She’s alright in small doses, but after a while it’s like “Okay I get it, you’re wishy-washy about hating everything. See ya next time we need a problem half-solved in the angriest manner possible.”

        4. Blue

          I don’t really like Sarah because she’s had so little character development. But then again, if she got more screentime maybe she’d get more character development.

        5. Ereb

          yup. Lizzie showing up everywhere, and that car drive was quite a built-up… but hopefully it’ll get picked up again.

  18. ADLegend21

    Baby Sal must be protected at ALL cost!

  19. AbacusWizard

    Great job making a good first impression, Walky.

  20. Reltzik

    Wow. Walky reached his peak maturity pretty early.

    1. Clif

      It’s a gift.

  21. Cholma

    Since David & Sal are twins, *why* are they in separate classes? And why? What elementary school has multiple classes for the same age group? Was my town just that small?

    1. Thag Simmons

      yes

    2. Yumi

      See above, this is very common for schools to do with twins. As for, “was my town just that small”… yes? There were four first grade classes in my school. Don’t remember the number of kindergarten classes for sure, but definitely more than one

      1. Yumi

        (And my school was one of–I believe– twelve elementary schools in the district for the suburban city I grew up in.)

        1. Cholma

          Wow. Not sure how many Elementary schools we had, but there were 3 Jr High when I was that age and 1 High school. (one of the Jr High schools closed while I was in High School. My Jr High closed sometime after I had left the state and the land is now a retirement home; guessing my old hometown is dying out) But anyway, in Elementary school, we just had one class per age group. Always thought that was normal. Guess not. We also lived in a sweet spot between the schools. 3 blocks from Elementary, 2 blocks from Jr High, and a 15 minute walk to High school.)

        2. khn0

          Ultimately it has to do with education politics. With higher population concentration, you can either open more school, or gte more people in one. City neighboorhoods with the most density are typically not the richest.

        3. BBCC

          It’s also better for the students and teachers to have a lower student to teacher ratio – hence, more classes if there’s too many.

      2. Thag Simmons

        I know for a fact my elementary school and my year in particular was fairly small and we still usually had enough kids for two separate classes

    3. Prior Semblance

      I think my elementary school had like somewhere between 6-12 classes per grade. My elementary school used to be a highschool before I was born apparently. They had to add a bunch of portable classroom buildings outside during the 4th grade year because the population was growing faster than they could build new schools.

      1. Yumi

        Wow, that sounds like a logistical nightmare.

      2. Liquid Len

        My town had quite a mix of elementary school sizes. One was the old high school downtown and probably had several classes per grade. Mine was one of the smallest schools and had 2 classes per grade K-6 (think it’s K-5 these days). It was a 15 minute walk from my house to school.

    4. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      My town growing up had several classes for the same age group. I also get the feeling these kids live in one of those states that has schools per county rather than per town.

      1. Yumi

        They grew up in Evansville, Indiana, where the school district is the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, with Vanderburgh being the name of the county they’re in.

      2. Opus the Poet

        I was in 3 different schools by the time I was in 2nd grade between moving and DOD changing the contract for which district we were in. Mind you JFK was shot while I was in K, where I was attending Iliahi Elementary, 1st was Schofield Barracks, and 2nd was Waihiawa Elementary where they divided grades up and I was put in Upper 2nd/Lower 3rd because I was Too Damn Smart For My Own Good. 3rd and 4th, not only did I go to the same school, I was in the same room both years. That was weird, but 5th was Decaturville Elementary, which was in the same building as my mother graduated from High School was even weirder. That one was really weird because I did normal 5th grade stuff most of the day, but 8th grade stuff in science, again because Too Damn Smart. First part of 6th grade was in Decaturville, after Thanksgiving was in Kenitra American Elementary because Morocco was a good place to overhear VC and North Vietnamese radio chatter and bust their cyphers (Dad’s unit got a medal for that but not actually presented until after the war because the operation was Above Top Secret). 7th grade was Kenitra American Jr-Sr High School, which aside from the location was a typical Jr HS. 8th was the ball-buster, I registered in 4 different school districts and actually got to attend 2, the 2nd and the 4th, because of having to move. Up until Christmas I was back in Decaturville Elementary, after Christmas I was in Middletown Middle in RI. 9th grade was Portsmouth HS because we moved again and I got my skull dented/busted because I let the football player copy all the wrong answers off my test and changed them all after he turned his test in. 10th-12th was Cottonwood HS, all three years and we didn’t move until after I graduated HS. By the time I graduated I had PTSD and depression from all the moving around and bullying, and maybe the getting caught in a revolution between 7th and 8th grades where the locals decided the king was Too Close to the Americans and not Arabic Enough.

        tl;dr I had a chaotic childhood

        1. Eagle Rock

          I pulled a version of the same 9th grade trick as you. On a multiple choice test, shifted all the answers over one (if right answer was A, entered B, etc.), then told the teacher afterwards to shift my answers back. Didn’t get punched out by any football players, though.

    5. Sam

      My school had like, 1 and 1/2 classes for most years but it was over all a pretty small school in the number of students it had as that meant there were around 30ish kids but usually less for each year we had – often less due to the amount of kids that moved in and then moved away later. Though also, a lot of our teachers moved in and out too which did not help and some of them were rather unhealthily attached (not bad as people just like, clingy and easily worried to a bizarre degree).

      And what I mean by 1 and 1/2 is that we had classes that were a mix of two different years which is probably not actually the best idea, but it is what they did. And usually the split was unequal so you’d get like 12 kids in one year and maybe 5 from another while the other classes would have the rest.

      So we had like 1, 1 & 2, 2, 3, 4, 4 & 5, 5, 6, 6 & 7 and 7. And yes, there was no combined class for 3, as they already split both the year below and above. And 5 for unknowable reasons had two different teachers in that switched in and out.

      When I look at their website, this has changed now to multiple classes for a year having 2 or 3 of them and they have larger numbers of students now, but when I was a kid, they had this weird system of mixed classes where the teacher had to get multiple levels of students doing the same work for a bit and then later split their work differently because they are at different levels of math and writing ability.

      1. angie

        never heard of any other school doing this! in my school it was two classes per grade, except in grades 1, 2 and 3 it was two classes + one teacher who taught all three at once. idk why they did it that way, but I was in the mixed grade class for all three years and that teacher was actually amazing. she kept everything so organized and efficient and taught all three grades separate things for their grade level and still made time for so many fun activities on top of it all. quite the whiplash going from three years of that to grade 4 where my class was taught by two part time teachers that worked every second day and couldn’t get anything done

        1. Sam

          The teachers handled stuff mostly well over all but the structure was honestly probably more problematic than it appeared. Also the year I had two teachers? That was yikes. Pretty sure one didn’t like me which is why I ended up in the wrong level of math even though I was really good at math back then and loved doing math.

        2. angie

          god I had a similar issue with my two grade 4 teachers. the one in charge of math gave us these worksheets for times tables where we had to get 50 of 50 questions right in 5 minutes, and then we’d get the next times table sheet next time. 0s and 1s were easy, but 2s I would consistently only finish 48-49 of them before the timer went and I would just hand it in instead of doing them because I was a hardcore rule follower. instead of recognizing I got the rest of those completely correct (and they only went up to 2×9 so the sheet had lots of repeat questions), she had me repeat my 2s for several months. when the rest of the class moved on from times tables, she sent me to a different room to practice 2s times table flash cards. by the end of the year I hadn’t learned most of the other times tables, how to multiply larger numbers or any division at all bc I had to redo 2s so many times instead. ended up figuring it all out on my own because I actually like math and even if I’m slow at it, I am good at it

      2. Uly

        when I was a kid, they had this weird system of mixed classes where the teacher had to get multiple levels of students doing the same work for a bit and then later split their work differently because they are at different levels of math and writing ability.

        You have to differentiate even when it’s all one grade level, because they’ll never all be at the same level in reading, writing, and arithmetic. I never ever was in an elementary class without at least three reading groups, two math groups, and two spelling groups.

    6. Needfuldoer

      My town wasn’t particularly large, but we had 2 or 3 classes of 32-35 kids for most of my age cohort’s school career. They still did the “neighborhood elementary school” model so they had to expand all the buildings for those years.

      Maybe there was just a lot of us?
      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    7. zee

      Literally every elementary school. My school only had 350 kids and we still had 2 classes for every grade. How small was your town dude? Did you grow up on the Isle of Gigha or something?

  22. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

    It’s flashback time! Billie-ve it!

  23. BBCC

    OH MY GOD THEY’RE THE CUTEST EVER <33333

    BRB, dying from cute overload.

  24. Ray

    BUS taco??

    1. Taffy

      Some say the bustaco sneaks into your kids’ rooms at night and steals their fat to keep its oil clean.

      1. The Wellerman

        ?

        The worse fear of those who only hope they’re not forever flat.

  25. Queezle

    My parents never brought me to the bus stop either. But my cat did.

    1. Arian

      You had an excellent cat.

      1. Queezle

        Yes she was the best.

  26. Amós Batista

    Oh shit, are we already on next storyline?

    1. Keulen

      That is way too accurate.

  27. Bagge

    Walky really has changed since he was a kid, hasn’t he?

    1. Azhrei Vep

      Yeah, it’s amazing. He’s way taller now!

      1. Bagge

        Well… a bit taller

  28. Acher4

    I adore the title of the storyline!

    Don’t Stop Billie-ving

    1. Daibhid C

      Hold on to that fillie-ling!

  29. Reaver

    Ooh, so Walky has never been likeable, got it lol

    1. Rogue 7

      …He’s 5 years old in this scene, 6 tops.

      1. Reaver

        Yeah and his personality since this age has yet to improve 😛

        1. Rogue 7

          I mean, I have very different standards for what I find likable in 6 year olds and what I find likable in 18 year olds?

        2. Reaver

          And yet Walky’s personality hasn’t deviated much from his younger self in the slightest, I personally don’t care for either age group, that’s why I didn’t have kids.

        3. june gloom

          Ah, there it is.

      2. Azhrei Vep

        Right. So no likeable.

        1. Azhrei Vep

          not likeable. Damn my fingers for being faster than my eyes.

  30. Reaver

    Also they are probably being split up to make it easier on their teachers, my identical twin uncles always got split up because they would feed off of each others silliness and make teaching difficult.

    1. Agemegos

      My identical-twin aunts got different haircuts to stop them from playing pranks on their teachers, swapping clothes if necessary.

      1. Reaver

        I’ve seen my uncles, they were identical in every sense, and frequently would swap classes, the only reason they got busted is cause one’s hand writing was absolute molten garbage lol

  31. Dr. Smart

    I’m glad Walky made such a great first impression for Billie

    1. Bagge

      at least she got the right idea from the very start

  32. Rabisch

    The beginning of a butiful friendship♡! To be honest, I hope this will be the arc where Walky will say to Jennifer that she’s no more a friend for him and he actually find her really boring, annoying and childlike.

    1. Reaver

      Which would probably be what she wants because she’s been actively trying to get him to leave her alone.

  33. Francoinblanco

    Enough that fundamentalist jazz, lets hear some siblings blues

  34. hof1991

    Are we really going to knock Charles for sweatpants when Jennifer’s parents decided to let their housekeeper oversee their daughters first day of school?

    I think this is Jennifer’s origin story not Charles’

    1. Agemegos

      I bet the Billingsworths were properly dressed, though.

  35. Amós Batista

    Looks like Charles already know about Jennifer’s parents. Or parents have some kind of secret society we will never know.

    1. Taffy

      I would imagine he knows the Billingsworths by name because they’re influential in the town. That or his scumbag wife took note of where the money’s at, and he knows about them through her. One of those options lets me insult Linda, so.

      1. Amós Batista

        If one options is against Linda, I’m gonna jump on that..

    2. thejeff

      What makes you think he knows about Jennifer’s parents?

      1. Amós Batista

        mistake

  36. Keulen

    Walky caught butts disease early in DoA.

  37. Cyrus Draegur

    Oh boy, humanizing flashbacks, wonder if that means someone else is about to die.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Personally I wonder if we’re finally gonna see the Billingsparents, though they already seem to be pretty much absent from the kid’s life.

  38. Juanoku

    AWW BABY SAL AND BILLIE
    also walky is there
    He’s not that different actually

  39. vlademir1

    Ok, cute as the kids are here… I just noticed the chapter title and groaned at the song reference

    1. Raen

      I’d say Billie was a small-town girl, but this looks pretty suburban, even light urban.

  40. june gloom

    I’m with Walky here. Butt bus, indeed!

  41. Felis Dee

    Halp! My son is about Walky’s age in this flashback and he’s all about the butt language rn as well and I’m scared he’s gonna turn out like Walky.

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