Deanna, Mother of 3

Let me see if I have this straight. Mike writes a book. He gets 10 copies for free. In today's For Better or For Worse; he commits 4 copies to his mom, and his 3 friends Weed, Gordon and Lawrence. For some reason, Deanna Patterson thinks this means she has to grab the box of books and take them all the way upstairs to the second floor away from Michael before he gives the rest away. The joke is hapless Mike is too generous for his own good, and his wife has to protect him from himself. Deanna can’t just ask him to not to give away all the books. Deanna can’t even examine the situation and realize Mike doesn’t have any friends above the 3 he has just named, so there is no danger of giving away any more books. The required response is for her to pick up the box and carry them away, as if Mike is some kind book-giving away addict.

Once again this is humour based along the idea of the wife’s condescension to her incompetent husband. Lynn Johnston has done this type of joke many times before, usually with Elly having to tell John some way to do something in a demeaning fashion, like loading a dishwasher, or folding towels, or dressing himself. It is very popular in my wife’s generation to say things like, “I have 3 children: a boy, a girl and my husband.” Men in my generation have grown accustomed to getting that kind of insult and accepting it. I remember a line from the Roseanne TV show, where, after receiving a putdown for being a man from Roseanne, the son said to the father, “I thought it was good to be a man.” The father replied, “Oh no, son. Not since the ‘60s.”

In my mother and father’s generation, that kind of humour was completely unacceptable. My mom would never have said that about my dad. A man, whom a woman had to treat like a child, would not have been decent husband material and actually would have been a source of embarrassment for the woman. I know this, because my grandfather fell into this category. If money got into his hands, he spent it, and my grandmother (once she realized this), took control of the situation to keep them out of debt. However, she never demeaned my grandfather for his lack of monetary control. Instead, she went out of her way to build him up in public or social situations.

Michael Patterson may be stuck up and self-centred, but in this strip, I sympathized with him. He has 10 free books to use to celebrate his success as a first time author, and his wife won’t even let him enjoy it.