Parenting & Family Quote by Phil Foglio

Phil Foglio’s line lands because it weaponizes affection. “Cherish” is doing a lot of work: it signals warmth and loyalty, then immediately pivots to “childlike gullibility,” a trait most people would file under “problem to outgrow.” The joke isn’t simply that his friends are credulous; it’s that credulity becomes a social glue in a certain kind of nerdy, improv-friendly friendship. If you’re the sort of group that can spend “several excited minutes” hunting for a nonexistent book, you’re already living inside a shared cartoon logic where the world is pliable and the bit is worth the time.

Foglio, a cartoonist steeped in gag rhythms, structures the sentence like a strip: setup (a flattering premise about friends), twist (the flattering premise is actually about being easy to prank), payoff (a miniature anecdote that proves the premise and gives it kinetic energy). “Excited minutes” is the key tonal choice. He doesn’t describe them as wasted or embarrassing; he frames them as joyous. The subtext is generous: being fooled isn’t humiliation, it’s participation. Gullibility here isn’t ignorance, it’s openness - the willingness to say yes to a ridiculous premise long enough for the group to have fun.

Contextually, this feels born from convention culture, fandom scavenger hunts, and the pre-instant-verification era when a confident claim could bloom into a communal quest. The line celebrates a particular creative ecosystem: friends who treat reality as negotiable because play is more interesting than being right.