Mar 11th 2008 07:13 am You say Francis…

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I heard he got into a bad fight with the 10,000th person who told him he spelled his name like a girl.

Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J

33 Responses to “You say Francis…”

  1. Greg from Robertsdale on 11 Mar 2008 at 7:31 am #

    If it assuages your ire, sir, I knew a Francis in my wife’s hometown in Minnesota (he taught me how to clean squirrels. Lotta work for a little meat, but SO worth it if you cook it right). And he spelled it the way you did. The editor at our Mobile Register is FrancEs Coleman, and SHE doesn’t get ribbed about her spelling, I bet. So, I would have to say you’re right. At least from the perspective of my limited experience. :o )
    Good perspective from Arlo in this one, by the way. We Do say some quirky things, don’t we?

  2. Eric G on 11 Mar 2008 at 8:32 am #

    Help me understand……

    I am a paying customer of comics.com. I pay for the convenience of having my favorite comics e-mailed to me and also hope that some of the $$ end up with the artists.

    Two days in a row I have received Sunday’s A&J rather than the correct strip. When I go to comics.com and login, the strips for the 10th and 11th are not there.

    However, if I follow the free link from here, the strips are present.

    Am I doing the wrong thing by paying?

  3. Jim in southwest Illannoy on 11 Mar 2008 at 8:34 am #

    As we get older we start having more and more of these conversations.

  4. Steve from Royal Oak on 11 Mar 2008 at 8:43 am #

    My father-in-law is Francis, but has always gone by the name of Frank, except for his mother. She died a couple of years ago at the age of 100 and every time she called for him it was always “Francis”. Had to teach my kids to stifle a giggle as I knew that he was sensitive to the name.

    Of course St Francis of Assisi was a wonderful man who gave up all of his worldly possessions to take care of the needy and animals. Sometimes when Arlo rants about corporations and commercialization, I think of St. Francis.

  5. Hurd in Mobile on 11 Mar 2008 at 9:15 am #

    This sounds like the old joke that my dad tells. In the south, most trips to the emergency room are preceded by the statement, “Hey Ya’ll, watch this.” I hate to say that I have done it myself.

    Hurd

  6. Don from Minnesota on 11 Mar 2008 at 9:43 am #

    Arlo isn’t totally correct … I want people saying “did you hear about…” when I win the powerball lottery. Wouldn’t that be a “fun” “did you hear about…”?

  7. Bill Bickel on 11 Mar 2008 at 12:08 pm #

    Have you heard, about dear Blanche
    Got run down by an avalanche…

  8. Don from Minnesota on 11 Mar 2008 at 1:08 pm #

    To: Eric G.

    In my humble opinion you are doing wrong by paying for something that can be had for just a little bit of clicking and linking…but if you have the disposable income that it doesn’t matter then heave ho, brother!

  9. Roberta from New Zealand on 11 Mar 2008 at 3:00 pm #

    I worked with a guy whose Dutch parents had thoughtfully named him Frances Maria van —. I gather it took his bank 20 years to reconcile themselves to the fact that he was a male. Ouch. Especially in that time when banks didn’t consider women to be a good risk for mortgages, etc.

  10. Mary in Ohio on 11 Mar 2008 at 3:51 pm #

    The venerable AARP sends all my mail to “Mr. Mary…..” I have heard of men named Shirley and Vivian, and even Dorris, but never “Mary.” However, when I wrote (I finally gave up) to admonish them, they inored me, the traditional position of a large entity with a woman, so I guess they grasp the basics…(HUGE eye roll here…)

    When I was a young man just out of college, I did a brief stint in the public relations department of Auburn University. The main office was in a building called Mary Martin Hall. We regularly would get mail beginning, “Dear Mrs. Hall….”

  11. Jeff in Ann Arbor on 11 Mar 2008 at 6:22 pm #

    Hurd – Or, “Hold my beer and watch this.”

    Followed later on by, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  12. Ron in NW IL on 11 Mar 2008 at 6:49 pm #

    Several years ago my wife received an offer to subscribe to a popular news magazine at a “special professional rate”. It was addressed to Mr. Patsy …… Having a little interest in receiving the magazine, I sent a check and informed that a professional can be a lady. Each time I renew (still in her name) I can hear a circulation manager’s Bwahahaha!

  13. ellen on 11 Mar 2008 at 7:47 pm #

    My dad is Francis, and his sister is Frances.
    Growing up, they never even realized that they had the same name, because he was Frankie and she was Franny.
    :D

    Ellen

  14. joe-massachusetts on 11 Mar 2008 at 8:01 pm #

    sorry to be picky but Frances with an “E” is female – Francis with an “I” is a male

  15. CG from MN on 11 Mar 2008 at 8:43 pm #

    As long as you are getting into the address thing after our mothers death we received a promotional card from some government entity to “Mrs. Julia Deceased S________”.
    I’m with Don about the Power Ball though. Or the IRS has gone out of business.

  16. Kim in California on 11 Mar 2008 at 9:10 pm #

    Ellen, are your Dad and your Aunt twins?

  17. Kim in California on 11 Mar 2008 at 9:11 pm #

    Oops. Sorry, Ellen, I meant to add, also, that sometimes twins are given names that are either almost identical, or they rhyme.

  18. Bill Bickel on 11 Mar 2008 at 10:32 pm #

    Normally yes, Joe; but sometimes parents screw up and, as Mr. Johnson is pointing out, sometimes cartoonists do as well.

  19. Jim in SE Mississippi on 11 Mar 2008 at 11:32 pm #

    Research shows the most common response from the driver when an automobile hydroplanes is “Oh, #%*@!” Except in Lower Alabama, where it’s “Hold my beer and watch this!” (According to a friend from Fairhope.)

  20. Luey Lipshits on 12 Mar 2008 at 3:44 am #

    Is that like my cousins two kids: Aaron (a Boy) and Erin (a girl)?

  21. Corine on 12 Mar 2008 at 5:09 am #

    Eric G… I hear your pain and frustration… I enjoy the A&J Sundays… but not 4 days in a row in my email.

  22. Laetitia in Australia on 12 Mar 2008 at 5:54 am #

    I still remember the time when my professional body (engineering) gave me a daggy no logo scarf for participating in student presentation night (the males got ties with the logo). It seemed that they had forgotten just how many female engineers there already are and how many were likely to graduate and had neglected to restock in time.

    Then there was the time when my husband tried to change his surname with the bank with whom he had a credit card. This was following our marriage and the hyphenation of our surnames.

    The bank in question would have accepted the marriage certificate as proof if he’d been female but wanted a deed poll notice for him (despite the fact that we’d already changed driver’s licences, other banks’ cards…). He closed the account and wrote to them to say he could take them through the Anti-discrimination Commission. They wrote back to say, yes, they were wrong and would be happy to re-open his account for him! (Who said we wanted to reopen it!)

  23. Rich from Belchertown on 12 Mar 2008 at 6:00 am #

    Joe — I think you missed the joke.

  24. Laura on 12 Mar 2008 at 6:10 am #

    Heh heh, now we know the other party in Frances’ fight…

  25. Susan on 12 Mar 2008 at 6:42 am #

    To Don from Minnesota
    How about sharing the clicks and links? I’m paying for it too and am STILL getting the Sunday Arlo and Janis in my email. (I wrote & complained. They wrote back and said they were looking into it.)

    However, from what I understand, Jimmy gets a little remuneration from our clicking on the A&J comic at comics.com. I hope he gets some from those of us who subscribe to A&J as well.

  26. Blinky the Wonder Wombat on 12 Mar 2008 at 7:06 am #

    The only reason I subscibe to comics.com is that the artisits get at least a little renumeration. So do tell, Jimmy, do you atually get a cut from the subscirption service? If you don’t, and based on the service I get from comics.com, I will cancel my subscription immediately.

    The cartoonists at comics.com do receive a percentage of income generated by the site. While welcome, it still is a drop in the bucket compared to income from a marginal newspaper client list. As for problems with comics.com, I can only suggest dropping them a message. I always hold off myself, because I figure, “They’ll fix it soon enough.” However, this seems not to be the case always. — JJ

  27. Joyce on 12 Mar 2008 at 7:24 am #

    Or how about the woman who named her two daughters Debra and Deborah? My mother, when angry, never used my full name, she just started through all the names in her head, including my cousins. I could tell how mad she was by how long it took her to come up with my name, and believe me when I say that it happened frequently.

  28. Jeff in Ann Arbor on 12 Mar 2008 at 7:48 am #

    There is an article on this subject in the March 11 NY Times http://tinyurl.com/23c4gz entitled “A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names.”

    I was pleased to see that an old friend, Cleve Evans, one of the country’s experts on given names, is quoted.

  29. Jim in southwest Illannoy on 12 Mar 2008 at 8:14 am #

    Joyce, my mom always went through her brothers’ names before she got to us boys, then went through them till she got to the right one when she was angry too. Mom was from what now would be considered a fairly large family (8 kids–4 boys and 5 girls).

    My wife and I have daughters from previous marriages whose names sound almost identical–Lovina and Louanna. This part was not planned. Now they each have a daughter–Savannah and Sarah. At least there’s enough difference there to not confuse their names *too* often. We have mixed up the names for our daughters many times though.

  30. Ellen on 12 Mar 2008 at 9:07 am #

    Kim in California: Nope! My dad and his sister are not twins. She is older and was named Frances. My grandfather was Francis too so I guess when my dad was born I guess he wanted a son named after him.

    Ellen

  31. sarah in oregon on 12 Mar 2008 at 9:24 am #

    Jim in SWI (I know it’s you this time )

    Sarah (with the H) is a great name and is usually pronounced correctly no matter what the region (although my aunt used to say it “say-rah”). But you’d be surprised at how many different spellings you can get out of the name…sahra, sarha even sahara. I used to answer the phone “this is Sarah” until I got something in the mail from some vendor I’d spoken with addressed to Mrs. Serra. I changed to “Sarah speaking” from then on.

    Often, what you hear is what you get.

    by the way….Frank Sinatra was a Francis wasn’t he?

    Jimmy — my brother was a Jimmy (and remained so to me his whole life) but when he got to high school, he worked hard to turn it in to Jim (and even occasionally James).

    I have always been “Jim” to my close family and “Jimmy” to the rest of the world, the opposite of the usual. I never cared particularly which variation of the name was used.

  32. Bob on 12 Mar 2008 at 10:36 am #

    Sarah – yes, Mr. Sinatra was a Francis. So was the mule in the movies. Two of my favorite Francises, although Frances Dean from 6th grade still holds a tiny piece of my hear.

  33. Jondell on 12 Mar 2008 at 12:06 pm #

    I get the “Do you think the garbage stinks?” translation ~ “Take out the trash please!”

    Then again if I wanted to play with stereo types I could say that because my wife is Colombian and a feminist that any time she verbally complains I should interpret each as a request to do something post haste!