…or Stroke Her Ego into being an Arrogant Snob.”

Cute cartoon… but lousy backstory. She had the exact opposite of low self-esteem.

I apologize in advance to those who are offended by bluntly honest true stories behind a comic.

Another cartoon ad I did for my mom’s small business; idea by her, art by me.

This one has a rather amusing if not somewhat depressing back story. At the time, I was still single and my mom knew a “Good Christian girl” from a local store and thought she’d be a good match to introduce to me, or maybe my brother. Well, this girl was a long line of “Alleged Christian girl who didn’t act the least bit Christian in her day-to-day life despite TALKING a good game” kind of girl.

Sure, she was nice… kind of cute (if you’re into very short, short-haired redheads) but one of those… ‘too nice’ (but kind of actually sarcastic and condescending) types if you know what I mean. Like in so nice that she’d spend most of her time hanging out with (no joke) gangs of awkward juvenile delinquent guys that she met doing community service. An 18-year-old girl. And — ooh, this was the best part! — having my brother and I drive her 2 hours away to meet (and seem to have what looked like a premarital hookup?) with some random dude she was into, which is every bit as ‘moral’ as non-religious girls (that we had enough of trying to date in the first place). I guess I was too square for her — not that I was into her other than getting to know her and find out if we were compatible; I was always more into athletic women… who weren’t into hanging around large gangs of random dudes barely not in jail — but her faux politeness (that covered for thinly-veiled dismissive rudeness) was a turn-off either way.

Even after blowing me and my brother off (while taking advantage of our hospitality and gentlemanliness by using me and my brother for rides to other dudes’ places), she also dismissed me as a friend in the rudest of ways. The last time I chatted with her (just being a friend, mind you, not looking for a date or anything… in fact, I never asked her out once), and told her of a girl in Thailand that I met online and lost contact with, which then connected me to another girl I was chatting with, she oddly and almost angrily balked at me, saying, “She wasn’t’ real!” That was the last time I had anything to do with her, as we never spoke or chatted again.

Later on, that girl that I chatted with from Thailand wound up being my wife and mother of my children. So… kind of real to me. Huh.

It is no hyperbole that I literally met women chatting from the other side of the globe who acted more “Christian” and “moral” (as in, didn’t “hang out” with and “date” jailbird guys) in Thailand, where they’re mostly Buddhist. In fact, meeting girls like her drove me to look for girls in other countries — and MARRIED one, who actually didn’t just become a Christian, but *gasp?!* ACTS like one. And oh, she was and is way more real than this phony-baloney girl that my mom deeply apologized for ever introducing me to.

So sad, but so true.

Sorry if that took a bit of a dark twist…