ic. Now there's a standard within the cartoonist world that if you mention somebody else's comic in your comic, there's sort of a custom that happens after that. And the custom is that the person who was mentioned will often contact you and say, can I have the original? Because cartoonists will collect originals from other cartoonists.

So when I mentioned Garfield, and this is when I was basically an unknown, I just started cartooning, I got contacted by Jim Davis. Now you can imagine if you're a starting cartoonist, you know, just imagine what happens if Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield when Garfield's gigantic, imagine being contacted by the creator of a Garfield and asking for your original. It's like the coolest thing ever, right? If you're just starting out cartooning, it's like the pope just patted you on the head or something.

So I of course agreed immediately. Instead of my crappy Dilbert comic with ink that probably disappeared a week after he got it, I didn't use permanent ink in those days and don't ask why, it's a long story. But so I've got this original Garfield. Probably at the time it was worth maybe a thousand dollars, you know, which would be more today. And I thought, you know, it's not enough to own one. Other people have to see this thing. And I'm like, what is the point of reaching this pinnacle of my cartooning success at that point if I can't show it off, show it to somebody?

So I took it to my local framing shop and here was what I thought would be my first hit of narcissistic supply. I thought, wait until the person I asked to frame this, because it was where you leave it and they frame it for you, I thought, wait until the person I asked to frame this figures out what this is. It's like gold, right? And the person is going to ask, naturally I figure they're going to say, is this an original Garfield? And I would say, yeah, it is. It is. Ah, yeah, it is. And then of course you would follow up like, how is it that you've come into acquisition of this valuable property? And I would say, ah, you know, Jim sent it to me. If you have other questions you might want to follow up. Oh, why did he send it to me? Oh, it turns out that I'm also a cartoonist. Yeah, yeah, I do a cartoon and it caught his attention and he liked it. Yeah, top cartoonist in the world, who's maybe a living legend, he liked my cartoon. So he asked if he could trade. That's how I thought it would go in my mind. I imagined myself fake-humbly saying how I got it while he was impressed and then I'd feel some narcissistic supply and I'd be feeling good for today. That's what I hoped.

That's not how it went. Here's how it went. I'm standing in line behind one other customer. There's just three of us in the store: the person who owns the place, customer in front of me, and me. Customer in front of me is getting a framed Garfield. Yep, we both had one. And then do you know what the store owner said to me when I brought mine? Third one today. Now it turns out that was a joke. It was not the third one today. But the fact that there were two of them, talk about deflating. My god.

Now fast forward to last night. All right, so fast forward a few decades to last night. My new thing that I like to humbly drop into stories, not really humbly at all, is that I once visited the Oval Office and talked to President Trump. Now if that ever happens to you or something like it, you're not going to keep that to yourself, right? Now I'm worse because I like bragging so I want everybody to know. But I don't want to be like, I got invited to the White House. So I want it to be subtly, you know, maybe it just comes up as a natural part of the conversation. I'll be like, yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact, yup, been to the Oval. So I'll do things like if there's a news program and it shows the Oval Office, you know, I'll drop in something like, huh, looks like they changed the rug. You know, just leave that in there. Ah, looks like, is that the same lamp? Looks like a different lamp. You know, just wait for somebody to ask the question like, well I don't like