Teresa Burns Parkhurst’s cartoon is set on a sidewalk, where a woman is yelling at a man who’s moving away from her. He appears to be doing lunges or imitating John Cleese’s silly walk from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
A few years ago I went to see “Hamilton” in Chicago. I came to the theater straight from work, so I was wearing a suit. While waiting on the sidewalk for my wife and daughters, a woman handed me her phone and asked me to take a picture of her and her daughter. “Sure,” I said, crouching down so I could aim up and get the marquee in the background. As I snapped the picture, I heard a loud ripping sound, and the woman grabbed her phone and her daughter and hurried away. I then looked down and saw that I had completely torn the crotch of my suit pants. I took off my jacket, draped it over my arms, and held it in front of me so no one could see my now crotchless wool pants. That incident inspired these three captions:
- “What was that ripping sound?”
- “I’m getting tired of mending that crotch.”
- “This time you can mend your own damn crotch.”
Here’s my Monty Python reference: “Don’t you silly walk away from me.”
And here are a couple of allusions to the exercise that’s good for the thighs and buttocks:
- “Don’t you lunge away from me.”
- “Do that at the gym.”
Now let’s see how you did:
Here’s just a sample of the many references to the “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit from “Monty Python:”
- “Don’t you silly walk away from me!”
- “Don’t you dare just silly walk away from me!”
- “You can’t just silly walk out on me!”
The next set of entries also highlight the man’s bizarre gait, but they don’t specifically refer to the “Python” sketch. Instead, they take a phrase that someone might actually say during an argument and give the phrase a new meaning within the context of the cartoon:
- “Don’t you dare walk away from me like that!”
- “You can’t walk away from me like that.”
- “Don’t leave me like this!”
The next two captions also transform the meaning of otherwise unremarkable statements:
- “You’re walking the wrong way!”
- “You have to learn how to walk away.”
Like I did, several of you alluded to the exercise for sculpting thighs and buttocks:
- “Don’t you lunge away from me.”
- “Don’t you dare lunge away from me!”
- “Gym closed again?”
- “Who asks someone out to lunge?”
That last caption doubles as one of the week’s best puns. Here are a few more:
- “I’m not ready to take that kind of step.”
- “The only thing you’re stretching is your luck.”
- “My patience, that’s what you’re stretching.”
Several of you suggested the man was getting down on one knee to propose:
- “If you’re trying to propose, I’m over here.”
- “Stop practicing. Just come back and propose.”
In this entry, the woman was hoping for a proposal: “When you said you wanted to take a big step, I assumed you were thinking of something else.”
And here, the man’s trying to slink away before he’s pressured to propose: “Oh, no you don’t… you wait right here while I go in and buy that pregnancy test!”
Before Joe Louis’s 1941 title fight with the lighter and faster Billy Conn, a reporter asked Louis what he would do about Conn’s hit-and-run strategy. Louis replied, “He can run, but he can’t hide.” Here’s are two clever and fitting variations on that line:
- “You can run, but you can’t walk.”
- “You can lunge, but you can’t hide!”
Responding to Republican claims that Congress cannot impeach and convict Trump and simultaneously address all the pressing problems facing the nation, Senator Bernie Sanders said, “We can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.” Here’s are some variations on that idea:
- “It’s not easy with chewing gum, is it?”
- “Try spitting out the gum!”
- “Spit out the gum!”
These captions draw a distinction between physical and emotional flexibility:
- “That’s not what I meant when I asked you to be more flexible.”
- “That’s it. I’m leaving you for someone less flexible.”
A couple of you suggested the man might be having trouble walking because he’s wearing the wrong underwear:
- “Thongs were made for women.”
- “Thongs are for women.”
- “That’s what you get for wearing my thong.”
Finally, here’s an entry that suggests the woman would be willing to walk like the man if she were better prepared: “I’d love to try that but I’m not wearing any underwear.”
I typically urge contestants to avoid italics and exclamation points, which are almost always unnecessary, but given the woman’s expression in this cartoon, I think they’re appropriate. This week’s winner, therefore, is, “Don’t you dare walk away from me like that!”
ENTER THIS WEEK’S CAPTION CONTEST
Lawrence Wood has won The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest a record-setting seven times and been a finalist two other times. He has collaborated with New Yorker cartoonists Peter Kuper, Lila Ash, Felipe Galindo Gomez, and Harry Bliss (until Bliss tossed him aside, as anyone would, to collaborate with Steve Martin). Nine of his collaborations have appeared in The New Yorker, and one is included in the New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons.