Remember a few days ago when I said I’d allow myself some credit for maybe sticking the arrow pointing upwards on purpose because all that credit would get taken away later?  Yeah.  Here we go.

To everyone in the world but me, this last panel is an amazingly obvious sexual innuendo.  Danny has a comedically large bone.  He wants Joyce to help him “bury it.”  May folks think this is the actual joke!

IT IS NOT.

The implications never registered with me.  Danny was a dog.  I thought it’d be funny if he wanted to bury a bone, and as you may note from Joyce’s first appearance, I have/had a thing for oversized props.  That was it.  I swear.

But I’m like visiting my dad at the time.  This may have been during the beginning of my parents’ separation/divorce?  I think?  It’s all kind of fuzzy.  All I remember is that it was just me and him.  And he read this strip, and gives me this look.  And I have no idea what’s going on.  And my dad of all people ends up being the person who tells me that I’ve just drawn this naughty thing.  And he’s super-pleased, and I’m absolutely scandalized.  And he won’t believe me that I had no idea — he just thinks I’m embarrassed at being caught at writing dirty jokes by my father.

Man.

I keep telling you Joyce is autobiographical.  And that I just didn’t know it yet.