"I" and "me" = Patterson / Richards

Back for a 3rd day in For Better or For Worse, Christine the speech therapist changes her appearance each day, and in Tuesday’s strip, demonstrates very clearly the current artist of the strip stinks at drawing consistent faces. It is interesting she is starting Jim on the words, “I” and “me”. Talk about knowing how to play to a Patterson or Richards’ vanity. No doubt there was a study at some point of the words they say the most often and “I” and “me” were the clear winners.

I also find it interesting that Judith the physiotherapist seems to have quite a bit more success with Jim than Christine. Lynn Johnston chose not to make any jokes about Jim’s physical progress, as he started working on getting out of bed himself and walking with a cane. There was none of the obvious jokes like “Yes, you can(e)!” or things like that. In speech, Jim has made virtually no progress at all, and Lynn has him making jokes at his failures. It’s an odd sort of “Praise him when he’s up. Kick him when he’s down.”

If Lynn likes the verbal jokes of Jim not being able to pronounce things, this could be a running joke with him, if it isn’t already. Lynn likes running jokes, and moreover, she likes beating them to a bloody pulp with reuse, like the never-ending flapping arm, menopause jokes. I have this feeling Jim’s speech is not ever going to get much better, even though he may almost completely recover physically to where he was before his stroke, and Lynn will be taunting him for his lack of speech to the bitter hybrid end in September.