Pardon the expression, but OMG! Today's retro strip felt like the ice bucket challenge to me. When my late wife and I went to dinner the first time, we were both wide-eyed in the morning, and smiling. That happened a lot for another 34 years. Where did GBT get his awesome knowledge of the human condition?

Hard to believe now, but I remember how notorious today's strip was when it first came out in 1976. I was in college then, and the Boston Globe was one of many newspapers that refused to run it. As I recall, the Globe replaced the strip with a paragraph declaring it "in dubious taste." Fortunately, one of the local alternative weeklies printed it for us. (Remember, kids, no internet in those days.)

Today's five-year flashback choked me up. Two heroes just chatting, a GBT small masterpiece. The courage of Army troops amazes me, and I'm very proud to be an Army vet, even though I served in peacetime. I've begun wearing Army insignia a little, not to share the credit I haven't earned, but to help people remember and talk about what most of us owe to the fighters.

Anyone else nostalgic for the days when the phone rang at home, and if you were out, you were out?

Every time I watch "Criminal Minds" on television, when Thomas Gibson appears I am reminded of Doonesbury and one of your characters. But I cannot put my finger on which one!

Once again GBT brings humor to humorless topics. Global warming and the Ukraine situation in one strip. Brilliant.

How fun to see Joanie and Rick begin their relationship. I remember how worried I was when she declared her feelings for Andy, that he would reject her and become a hated character in my eyes. How dare anyone reject the beloved Ms. Caucus! That situation was handled perfectly and paved the way for her to have the happy pairing she so deserved.

Welcome back, Lacey Davenport -- O that you were in Congress today.

Yay Lacey Davenport! The best Doonesbury character is back, if only in flashback. The old-school politicians who aren't afraid to try new things; I miss them.

Thank you so much for replaying Rick and Joanie's courtship -- probably the most poignant and funniest, and dare I say it, cutest, love affairs in the strip's history.

The Rick/Joanie drama was contemporaneous with All in the Family. Archie would have said: "There's hormones running all through that comic strip!"

I am very moved by today's retro strip, where Rick and Joanie go to dinner. I missed that sequence back in the day, and it is satisfying to see it playing out.

Yay! Joan and Rick's courtship! So sweet! I look forward to "I'm pretty good at breakfast, too."

Had I not been sensitized to the significance of eye shape (wide-eyed vs. lidded) by the discussion of Sam's transition from child to adolescent, I would have missed the subtlety of the eyes in today's strip about Rick and Joanie's first date. Both start lidded, Joanie shifts to wide-eyed in panels two and three, and by the last panel both are wide-eyed with faux surprise. Dinner! No wonder there are college courses in Doonesbury.

Where are we? What year is it this week?

Over the years your brilliance has enthralled me. I'm 82 years old and my health is lousy. I may not be around to thank you later. But I thank you now for the joy that you have brought to me over the years.

Today's strip is about 20 years outdated. Many U.S. universities right now give more rights and protections to reporting parties of sexual assault than they do to the accused students.

"We also place a very high priority on student safety." Score another one against Orwellian double-speak. My daughter once worked at a domestic violence and sexual assault center in a small southern college town and was appalled at the self-preservation mentality and cover-up treatment of student rape by university higher-ups, too often protecting student-athletes. Similar to this recent example at Hobart and William Smith College: "Reporting Rape, and Wishing She Hadn't."

How's this for some Innovative (idiot savant) thinking: When I read the the BLOWBACK request to "keep those comments coming," my mind came up with "Commentum Commatus." Zat outside the box enough for ya ?

All this slightly aggressive scorn being heaped upon smart phones brings me back to one of those moments in my teens (in the '70s) when I consciously stopped myself in the middle of an elder neighbour's (that's the Canadian spelling, red underlining fascist) tirade about TV, thinking "I will never visit the same envious crap on the generations that follow me." Face it guys, we've been on this road, as Neil Postman points out in Amusing Ourselves to Death since the invention of writing. All it takes to overcome it is the will to disengage. It may be hard to hear above the noise, but thousands of our children are doing just that, leaving Facebook and Tumblr in the dust while they quietly get on with their lives.

And oh yes, let me also say thank God for Doonesbury. My triumvirate for ages was Doonesbury, Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes. My stool still rests firmly on thi s one leg. Cheers!