Wandering in the Rain – Looking for a Plot

If I were to attack today’s For Better or For Worse on the basis of poor parenting, the obvious point to make would be that Elly’s parting words to young Michael playing in the rain should not be “Don’t go getting wet!!” ; but should be “If you hear thunder or see lightning, you need to come inside.” However, the main point of this strip seems to be the joke that Elly is telling young Michael not only the wrong thing, but something that makes little sense considering where he is and what he plans to do.

She says it out of habit, I suppose; but that raises the issue of why she would say it out of habit. Possibly she is saying that because young Michael usually goes out into the rain without his rain gear. However, there is another possible reason. In order to know that reason, you have to know the “April rescued from the ravine waters by Farley” story, and the fact that there is a ravine close by the Patterson house where there is a regular water flow. Saying it out of habit would mean that Elly regularly tries to keep Mike from getting in that water.

We don’t know which one, and it doesn’t really matter for the purpose of this strip. This could have just as easily have been Mike going to play in the grass and Elly says, “Don’t get any grass stains on your clothes” or Mike going to play in the dirt and Elly says “Don’t get dirty” or rather “Don’t go getting dirty!!!!” Is that way of phrasing things a Canadianism? If I look at a recent strip, covering the same ground, Deanna says, “Don’t go XXXX-ing” several times to Meredith and Robin. Considering the example of that strip with Deanna, then maybe Elly really does expect young Michael to play in the rain without getting wet.

The other odd thing about the sequence of strips this week, is how we have gone from little Lizzie just learning to walk to Lizzie out in full rain regalia and able to play in the rain. Frankly I would think that this would be beyond the skills of a newly-learned walker. However, there they are out in the rain and little Lizzie seems to walk great after such a short time of learning. Maybe the point of Lizzie walking is so that she can play in the rain, and the point of playing in the rain is so that Michael can be left playing in the rain, and the point of leaving Michael in the rain is that he uncovers Farley the wonder puppy, just 9 days away from his scheduled deadline of reappearing in the month of October. Who knows? I look at the strips this week wondering where the story could possibly be going, and I still have no clue.

As for me, I have fond memories of my kids playing in the rain. In Arizona, the soil is terrible for absorbing water and so we often have the large mudless puddles that come up in our yard during a rain. When my kids were smaller, they enjoyed going out in the rain to play in the puddles, like they were little miniature swimming pools. Of course in Arizona, saying, “Don’t go getting wet!!” is definitely not a reflex command for parents, especially in Tucson where we have something like 340 days of sunshine a year.