2013-10-01

An elderly man in old-fashioned formal dress sits in a red armchair, raising an index finger to lecture a younger person whose head is seen from behind in the foreground. His speech bubble reads: "When I was a boy, we had to walk in the snow every day in no shoes on a non-orientable surface for which the notions of beginning and end were meaningless." A caption below the panel reads: "August Möbius found a lot of applications for his discoveries." The joke riffs on the classic "walked to school uphill both ways in the snow" grandpa boast, swapped for the Möbius strip, a one-sided surface with no distinct beginning or end. Votey (bonus panel): the same man, in plain black-and-white line art, adds: "In fact, I'm still walking to school now!" — because a non-orientable loop never ends.