Liam Walsh’s cartoon is set in a bar, where a bespectacled man—presumably the father of the toddler who’s strapped to his back—is about to have a fistfight with another man. The father’s left hand is balled into a fist, and he’s pointing his right index finger at the other man, who’s assumed the fighting stance. The father is speaking.
I first put a slight twist on some common trash talk: “You’re about to get your ass spanked.”
My next caption suggests that the father is taking precautions to protect himself but not the child: “Wait. Let me take off my glasses.”
I next have the father fiercely defending the Montessori approach to childhood education: “Waldorf? Why, you sonofabitch!”
Here’s a reference to a now disfavored way of disciplining a child: “Time for some corporal punishment.”
And finally, here are two captions inspired by parents who tell their children to settle disputes with words:
- “I’m through using my words.”
- “Use different words!”
Now let’s see how you did.
I’ll start with three entries that take a common phrase and give it a new and clever meaning within the context of the cartoon:
- “Use your words.”
- “You’ll never win a fight with a toddler.”
- “I will not be put into the middle of this.”
That third caption would be better if “into” were shortened to “in.”
This next entry takes a common phrase and gives it a new meaning, but in an unusual way. It starts with the common phrase, which is not funny by itself, and adds a sentence that serves as the punchline. “Let’s take this outside. There’s a playground down the block.”
Like I did, several of you focused on the father’s eyewear:
- “You’d hit a man with glasses?”
- “Wait until I take off my glasses.”
- “Wait. I need to take off my glasses.”
- “You don’t hit a man with glasses.”
These entries explain why the men are fighting:
- “At least I didn’t leave my kid home alone.”
- “Never question my parenting!”
- “That was not your bottle!”
- “Who you calling cutie-pie?”
- “Fine, you can have your damn baby back.”
I love the way that fifth entry suggests an angle—kidnapping—I never even considered. It’s a great “out of left field” caption.
Here’s a Second Amendment joke—“You gotta problem with open carry?”—that doesn’t quite work because “gotta” means “have got to.” The caption should read, “You got a problem with open carry?”
Like I did, a few of you put a twist on trash talk:
- “I could knock you out with 2 hands behind my back!”
- “I’ll fight you with 2 hands behind my back!”
- “I could beat you with one kid tied behind my back.”
- “Yeah, you and whose baby?”
I’m guessing those first two captions were submitted by the same person, who doesn’t like to spell out numbers.
This caption suggests that the man without the child started the fight, and explains why he’s so belligerent:
- “Looks like someone is overtired.”
- “Somebody needs a nap!”
I’ll end this commentary with the week’s best pun: “Them’s spanking words.”
There were a lot of terrific entries and I had a hard time selecting the best, so I’m going to take a page from Mankoff’s book and choose not just a winner but two runners-up.
The winning caption: “Never question my parenting!”
The two runners-up:
- “Fine, you can have your damn baby back.”
- “Use your words.”