old
Original: old on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Child: Dad whats it like getting old?
Father (reading a tablet/book in an armchair): You get more and more particular while becoming more and more generic.
Panel 2:
Father: I have a complex path full of specific hardships, victories, ailments... In that way I'm far more different from my friends than you are from yours.
Panel 3:
Father: But the result of the particulars is a middle-aged man who has bog-standard worries. He's more familiar with death now. His old friends seem crazy and distant to him. His imagination falters under the weight of intrusions.
Panel 4:
Father: Every year, young people are more mysterious to him, and the rebels from his childhood now appear in commercials to sell him medicine.
Panel 5:
Father: He sits, and he looks out, his bones are cold, the sunrise pink is fuzzy until he puts on his glasses, he sips a brand of coffee he settled on 20 years ago, and which he will drink until he dies.
Panel 6:
Father: His aching knees are Steve's tired mornings or Joe's bad digestion or Dave's sadness. Dan's kids won't call him, Bob never had any. Eric isn't as smart as he hoped he was. All different, all identical.
Panel 7 (close-up of father's legs/shoes):
Child (small speech balloon from off-panel): I meant whats it like to be 8.
Panel 8:
Child looks shocked/upset.
Panel 9 (close-up of father):
Father: At 8 you start cleaning the cat shit.
Panel 10 (wide shot: child standing holding a bag, father seated reading in red armchair):
Child: Life is misery.
Votey:
Father (speech balloon, close-up of child's head looking startled): Also I'll need you to get a job.
Child: Dad whats it like getting old?
Father (reading a tablet/book in an armchair): You get more and more particular while becoming more and more generic.
Panel 2:
Father: I have a complex path full of specific hardships, victories, ailments... In that way I'm far more different from my friends than you are from yours.
Panel 3:
Father: But the result of the particulars is a middle-aged man who has bog-standard worries. He's more familiar with death now. His old friends seem crazy and distant to him. His imagination falters under the weight of intrusions.
Panel 4:
Father: Every year, young people are more mysterious to him, and the rebels from his childhood now appear in commercials to sell him medicine.
Panel 5:
Father: He sits, and he looks out, his bones are cold, the sunrise pink is fuzzy until he puts on his glasses, he sips a brand of coffee he settled on 20 years ago, and which he will drink until he dies.
Panel 6:
Father: His aching knees are Steve's tired mornings or Joe's bad digestion or Dave's sadness. Dan's kids won't call him, Bob never had any. Eric isn't as smart as he hoped he was. All different, all identical.
Panel 7 (close-up of father's legs/shoes):
Child (small speech balloon from off-panel): I meant whats it like to be 8.
Panel 8:
Child looks shocked/upset.
Panel 9 (close-up of father):
Father: At 8 you start cleaning the cat shit.
Panel 10 (wide shot: child standing holding a bag, father seated reading in red armchair):
Child: Life is misery.
Votey:
Father (speech balloon, close-up of child's head looking startled): Also I'll need you to get a job.
Alt text
A multi-panel SMBC comic. A young child asks his father, who is relaxing in a red armchair reading, "Dad whats it like getting old?" The father launches into a long, bleak monologue across several panels: aging means becoming "more and more particular while becoming more and more generic." He describes a middle-aged man with bog-standard worries who is more familiar with death, whose old friends seem crazy and distant, whose imagination falters; young people grow mysterious and the rebels of his childhood sell him medicine in commercials; he drinks the same coffee he settled on 20 years ago until he dies; his and his friends' specific ailments (aching knees, bad digestion, sadness, kids who won't call) are "all different, all identical." In a small balloon the child clarifies, "I meant whats it like to be 8." The child looks shocked. The father, deadpan, replies, "At 8 you start cleaning the cat shit." Final wide panel: the small child stands holding a bag while the father keeps reading; the child flatly concludes, "Life is misery." Votey (aftercomic): a close-up of the wide-eyed child as the father adds, "Also I'll need you to get a job."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.