Friday, November 02, 2007

The Mind of Lizzie Patterson

Hello, folks! I am Lizzie Patterson, a cute and adorable baby. Life is pretty much perfect for me. I get food when I want it. I don’t have to clean up after myself. Even my poop is handled. And I am gosh darn cute, kind of like Sally Brown, a friend of mine.

I only have one problem. I have an older brother and he likes to play with me. I can’t talk. I can’t walk. I can’t play games. Heck, I can’t even crawl, and this guy still wants to play with me. I think he is seriously disturbed.

I think I know the reason. One is my dad. He’s never around. Other babies tell me it the dad’s responsibility to rough house with their sons, but my dad never does. The other is my mom. She just leaves me alone with this guy, unsupervised and everything. Some parents might worry their baby would be accidentally hurt, but not my mom. The only time she comes in the room is when she thinks I have been hurt. The rest of the time, it’s just me and my brother. Obviously, since I can’t crawl, I can’t get away from him.

One day my nemesis, my brother tried to say, “Hi!” to me. Well, I gave him what for. A rattle to the eye. Then just when he started to give my arms a shake, mom shows up and lectures him.

Another day, my brother got ahold of my bottle and put it on a string. I would grab at the bottle and then he would pull the string so I would fall down trying to get it. Mom showed up then and she was mad at him like always. If she had thought about it, she would have realized that she shouldn’t have left me alone with a bottle and that only an idiot would tie a string on a bottle he wasn’t planning to give to me in the first place. You can just hold it in your hands to do that. You don’t need a string. After all, it’s not like I can crawl after you.

You might think my brother and I weren’t exactly “friends.” That’s another way of saying we were enemies. Or as they say when you are talking about family, “We loved each other—we just had our differences.” That’s another way of saying, when I noticed his differences, I hated him.

One thing I noticed about my brother, even when mom was changing my diaper…let me stop for a moment and say that when I get to be a mommy, I am definitely going to get easy-removal pants for my babies, and not these things where you have to tip the baby on her side just to take her pants down to change her diaper. That’s just stupid…anyway, I digress. One thing I noticed about my brother is he is emotional (which mean he will cry if I hit or pinch him) and sensitive (same as emotional) and theatrical (which means he makes a lot of noise when he cries). Let me rephrase that. I noticed my brother would fly off the handle whenever I spit at him, so I did it all the time. I would take my pacifier out of my mouth with one hand, and then give a big, old raspberry. He hated it. You know, I think if I ever know a boy (other than my brother) who doesn’t do exactly what I want him to do, I am going to raspberry him too.

You have to wait for the right time to do it though. I recommend waiting until your mommy is cleaning up the poop in your diaper. She’s distracted than and wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference in wetness coming from a raspberry or wetness coming from your poop. I tell you there is nothing more hilarious than watching your mom get all upset at your brother, at the same time she is changing your diaper. There’s poop everywhere and who gets blamed? You got it, the brother. Ah, life is sweet.

5 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Ah, if only the Pattersons could think. Imagine how great life would have been! If Elly could think, she'd have supervised the children a lot damn closer instead of wailing about how unnatural having children is. That way, she could have stopped most of the hatefulness before it started. She'd also have been able to realize that Mike and Liz's emotional needs were just as important as her own and reassured them that they were loved even if she WAS faking t. If John could think, he'ds realize that his wife wasn't his servant and children not toys to play with when he felt like it and been a positive influence on them. As it stands, Mike should have been signed up for the Big Brother program because in every way that mattered, he was the child of a single mom.

3:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, Howard, you've done it again! Reduced to the simplest components what is just so wrong about FBoFW. That's the problem with this "sibling rivaly"--they were basically left alone, until Elly came in to yell or break them up. And of course, Dee is repeating that with Robin & Merrie. But at least Dee does work outside the home, and she is present more than John--whose only role seemed to be to scoop Liz up and dance around with her, and then go back to work.

I think that is another problem with the old strips that doesn't translate well to today. Now, dads (for the most part) are so much more more involved and hands-on. The mom-does-it-all looks terribly sexist now.

And of course, I couldn't resist old selfish Lizzies evaluation of how she acted to her brother. All I could think was you mean "any male"--brother, boyfriends, male students. etc.

DJ

5:27 AM  
Blogger howard said...

I think that is another problem with the old strips that doesn't translate well to today. Now, dads (for the most part) are so much more more involved and hands-on. The mom-does-it-all looks terribly sexist now.

You are right about this. I often think the old time dads missed out on a lot of good things. Kids don’t stay little for long, and they are a lot of fun to play with and be around.

Even in the modern strips, Lynn Johnston has a problem with fatherhood. Lynn Johnston opted to assuage some of her “anti-male” anger with the “Mike as a crossdresser” Sunday strip for Hallowe’en, but she missed a grand opportunity. Imagine, if you will, Michael Patterson taking Merrie and Robin around their new neighbourhood trick-or-treating. They get candy from the Poiriers, the Nichols, the Enjos; and comments abound how Mike did the same thing when he was younger. We get to see Mike as a responsible parent, we get to Merrie and Robin enjoying Hallowe’en for the first time, and we get to see the neighbours we haven’t seen in awhile. I sometimes think Lynn Johnston doesn’t know how to show a modern father.

10:17 AM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

No, she does not. What's more, I don't think she cares particularly much about that either. If Mike were to give up his literary ambtions so he could become the kind, supportive person we'd like to see he'd be a bad father in Lynn's eyes because he wouldn't fulfill what she sees as his primary obligation as a man: bringing home the bacon.

11:38 AM  
Blogger howard said...

dreadedcandiru2,

In that case, then Lynn would not be that far removed from a lot of women. I still know women much younger than Lynn who have that expectation. Man = bacon.

3:01 PM  

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