Middle of the Night Sleep/Feed-ings
Today’s For Better or For Worse is unusual to me, because I cannot recollect any occasion in which I would get up for a crying child, have the child calmed down over my shoulder and then think that the next step was to put the child in a high chair and give her a cup of something to drink. After all, the objective is to get the child to stop crying and back to sleep, and that seems to have occurred at the point where John has her over his shoulder opening the refrigerator door. Why would he then continue on to the complicated process of putting her in a high chair and pouring a glass of milk? I cannot think of a single occasion in all my parenting where I ever did that.
Now, if you want to talk falling asleep while trying to get a baby to stop crying, then that is a wholly different story. There were many occasions where, after changing a diaper (whether it needed to be changed or not) I would take the baby into my arms and sit in the rocking chair (cleverly placed by the crib) and hold the child close to me in order to calm her down and rock her back to sleep. On those occasions, if I was really tired, I sometimes would find that I had dozed off during the rocking along with the child, and then began the difficult process of getting the child from my arms in the rocker back to the crib without waking her up again. Because, if you wake her up again and she starts crying, then you have to begin the whole process over, except minus the diaper-changing.
I think what we are seeing in today’s For Better or Worse is sitcom humour. You can understand why it’s supposed to be funny, but it requires a suspension of disbelief in order to work:
1. You have to believe that John is so tired that he can do all those things without it waking him up.
2. You have to believe that little Elizabeth would not start crying again immediately when she did not get the glass of milk.
3. You have to believe that a kid who eats out of a high chair can handle milk out of a glass. My kids used non-spill sippy cups when they were of the age where their stomachs could handle milk.
If you can suspend your disbelief, the strip will work. However, one of the majour ideas behind For Better or For Worse’s popularity is the idea that people can see these strips and relate to them in their own lives. In other words, the old “it’s funny because it’s true” business. For me, this strip strikes out in that regard. I only find it funny in a sitcom kind of way.
Now, if you want to talk falling asleep while trying to get a baby to stop crying, then that is a wholly different story. There were many occasions where, after changing a diaper (whether it needed to be changed or not) I would take the baby into my arms and sit in the rocking chair (cleverly placed by the crib) and hold the child close to me in order to calm her down and rock her back to sleep. On those occasions, if I was really tired, I sometimes would find that I had dozed off during the rocking along with the child, and then began the difficult process of getting the child from my arms in the rocker back to the crib without waking her up again. Because, if you wake her up again and she starts crying, then you have to begin the whole process over, except minus the diaper-changing.
I think what we are seeing in today’s For Better or Worse is sitcom humour. You can understand why it’s supposed to be funny, but it requires a suspension of disbelief in order to work:
1. You have to believe that John is so tired that he can do all those things without it waking him up.
2. You have to believe that little Elizabeth would not start crying again immediately when she did not get the glass of milk.
3. You have to believe that a kid who eats out of a high chair can handle milk out of a glass. My kids used non-spill sippy cups when they were of the age where their stomachs could handle milk.
If you can suspend your disbelief, the strip will work. However, one of the majour ideas behind For Better or For Worse’s popularity is the idea that people can see these strips and relate to them in their own lives. In other words, the old “it’s funny because it’s true” business. For me, this strip strikes out in that regard. I only find it funny in a sitcom kind of way.
posted by howard at 9:49 PM
7 Comments:
Oh. My. This isn't really funny; maybe it's because my first thought was about the stories of babies being left out in the car "by accident" and dying from heat stroke.
No wonder Liz has issues.
What I find interesting is that John is once again the holder of the idiot ball. The thing I remember most about the Early Years of the strip is that he could be counted on to do and say stupid things. I also remember the interview from Lynn Lake wherein Rod asked out loud if she could tone down his stupidity. Her negative response was fueled by it never having occured to her that his being thought of as a sitcom numbskull might be a problem for him.
debjyn,
I had some friends back in Texas who did this. It was grandparents with the grandbaby in the car. They were taking some stuff from the car to their business, and they told their older grandson to get the baby out of the car, since they were carrying heavy stuff. So, naturally the older grandson gets distracted by some video games that they have in their business offices and forgets until the grandparents have finished putting up all the stuff they brought in and ask the grandson where his sister is. The baby wasn’t in the car for very long in this situation but it was enough. They put the baby on ice literally and called 9-1-1, but the baby died anyway. No charges were filed against the grandparents or the grandson. However, this family was seriously messed up for as long as I knew them, while I was living in Texas.
Even though we would like to think that this joke back in 1980 was Lynn operating out of ignorance this strip from last year shows that Lynn still considers a child unattended in a high chair to be material for comedy.
DreadedCandiru2,
Her negative response was fueled by it never having occurred to her that his being thought of as a sitcom numbskull might be a problem for him.
The perception of men as complete incompetents when it came to household or child-rearing has been comedy fodder for years now. If you see a man and woman in a commercial for some household product, the man will be getting instructions from the woman due to his ignorance. I find those kinds of things to be a little offensive from my male perspective; however, I have noticed that a lot of women like them. I would think that they might be also offending at the stereotype which implies that only women should be doing housework; but many times that is not the case.
The difference here is real life. Even in the comedy shows, the man who is incompetent with his kids is incompetent because he has concentrated his competency on his job. There was a kid’s movie just this past year with The Rock as a unexpected dad played for comedy called The Game Plan. The joke was that he was a mean, lean football player; but had trouble when he had to learn to take care of a cute, little girl.
If I compare that movie with John Patterson / Rod Johnston, we do not get to see a lot of John competent at dentistry as The Rock was competent in football. In fact, we have seen a number of strips where John was incompetent there too. Moreover, in the movie, The Rock gets better at it and learns how to do it. I supposed compared to 1979 John Patterson, 2008 John is a better parent than he was back then; but it took a long time for him to get there.
And as I have stated before, the aspect of Rod Johnston’s life where he spent a lot of time in community work, helping out people in remote locations with his volunteer dentistry, or working in the local community college are left virtually untouched in the life of John Patterson. If Lynn had put some of these kinds of things in the strip, then Rod Johnston might have been a little less upset when he was portrayed making mistakes.
howtheduck:
And as I have stated before, the aspect of Rod Johnston’s life where he spent a lot of time in community work, helping out people in remote locations with his volunteer dentistry, or working in the local community college are left virtually untouched in the life of John Patterson. If Lynn had put some of these kinds of things in the strip, then Rod Johnston might have been a little less upset when he was portrayed making mistakes.
Instead, she insisted on leaving all that was good about him off the page. From an objective standpoint, it would have cost her nothing to portray him as a super-competent dentist and pillar of his community who's a bit out of his element in the domestic sphere. I could sympathize with a Canadian version of Hank Hill more than the fool I see in the strip now. It's probably her issues with her parents that cloud her judgment and force her to make John completely ineffectual just like her discomfort with raising children led her to leave what was good about Aaron and Katie on the cutting-room floor.
Howard,
If you see a man and woman in a commercial for some household product, the man will be getting instructions from the woman due to his ignorance. I find those kinds of things to be a little offensive from my male perspective; however, I have noticed that a lot of women like them.
Well, I am a woman who finds these idiotic commercials irritating and offensive. I never liked sitcom stupid, so the vintage FBorFW strips rarely humor me.
This week I expect to see Liz and Anthony gazing at stars. As Elizabeth is studying the heavens through Anthony’s telescope, our handsome prince will give our beautiful princess a certificate from the International Star Registry indicating that a star has been named after her-- Waabshiki-nka, the White Goose who always returns…
Anon NYC
Anon NYC,
Instead Waabshiki-nka, the White Goose who always returns, how about Warren the Black Wood who always returns.?
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