Dr. Norman Plett
About Norman: Dr. Plett is a family doctor who treated Lizzie when she was little.
The good doctor was added to the Who's Who section in the For Better or For Worse website, and it is one of those starred sections to show it has a backstory.
The backstory is essentially that Dr. Norman Plett broke his arm while playing Spider-Man when he was 10, and was so impressed by the doctor, he decided that should be his profession and he became a family practise doctor. There is a strip linked from May 1, 1981; where Elly takes sniveling Lizzie through a door which says: Dr. N. Plett physician and surgeon. Then there is another strip he is being man-handled by a diaper-clad Lizzie who is chewing on his stethoscope. The doctor says, “Her glands are up, she’s got some tonsillitis and a touch of otitis media.”
Then the punch line is when he says, “I think” as Liz grabs his collar and plays with his stethoscope. The joke is that Lizzie is such a handful, the doctor can’t make a good diagnosis. Otitis media is inflammation of the middle ear. A doctor talking to a mom would probably say, “ear infection.”
I have no recollection of the doctor, and I do not know if he made any more appearances aside from these. A quick google reveals no Dr. Normal Pletts in the North Bay / Corbeil area; but in 1981, I don’t think Lynn Johnston lived there yet.
The obvious problems are the doctor is shown to be a little incompetent, and he is not a pediatrician. If Elly opted to go to another doctor, I would understand completely. However, I expect the good doctor is important to the strips coming up for reprint from the early years of the strip. However, the odd part is that in the back story, the Patterson family is not mentioned at all. I would have guessed there would be at least one sentence talking about their relationship, as there are in the other back stories for the Who's Who.
The good doctor was added to the Who's Who section in the For Better or For Worse website, and it is one of those starred sections to show it has a backstory.
The backstory is essentially that Dr. Norman Plett broke his arm while playing Spider-Man when he was 10, and was so impressed by the doctor, he decided that should be his profession and he became a family practise doctor. There is a strip linked from May 1, 1981; where Elly takes sniveling Lizzie through a door which says: Dr. N. Plett physician and surgeon. Then there is another strip he is being man-handled by a diaper-clad Lizzie who is chewing on his stethoscope. The doctor says, “Her glands are up, she’s got some tonsillitis and a touch of otitis media.”
Then the punch line is when he says, “I think” as Liz grabs his collar and plays with his stethoscope. The joke is that Lizzie is such a handful, the doctor can’t make a good diagnosis. Otitis media is inflammation of the middle ear. A doctor talking to a mom would probably say, “ear infection.”
I have no recollection of the doctor, and I do not know if he made any more appearances aside from these. A quick google reveals no Dr. Normal Pletts in the North Bay / Corbeil area; but in 1981, I don’t think Lynn Johnston lived there yet.
The obvious problems are the doctor is shown to be a little incompetent, and he is not a pediatrician. If Elly opted to go to another doctor, I would understand completely. However, I expect the good doctor is important to the strips coming up for reprint from the early years of the strip. However, the odd part is that in the back story, the Patterson family is not mentioned at all. I would have guessed there would be at least one sentence talking about their relationship, as there are in the other back stories for the Who's Who.
posted by howard at 4:02 PM
2 Comments:
I think that in 1981, the Johnstons were living at Lynn Lake in Manitoba.
This document for the Association of Manitoba Municipalities' Report on Economic Development
http://amm.mb.ca/PDF/EDTF_Final.doc
Has a Norm Plett from Hanover, which is 718 miles away from Lynn Lake, Manitoba. In the Lynn Lake yellow pages there are lots of Pletts, but no doctor, that I could find. It has been 26 years though.
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