Will the Real Elly Patterson Please Stand Up?
Yeesh! I spent most of yesterday’s Blog entry talking about what an astonishingly uncaring parent new-run Elly was, and then Lynn Johnston follows it up with a reprint in today's For Better or For Worse that shows a caring and responsive Elly Patterson. She looks miserable, and she thinks about how she is caring for her child as her mother cared for her, except her mother looked better while she was doing it. It is remarkable that no matter what happens to Elly in her life, she still pays attention to how bad she looks.
In the meantime, the humidifier next to Michael brings back memories of when we used to have one of those. And of course, the look of sick Michael in bed alternatively reminds me of a muppet or a Charles Schulz drawing. I am not sure which one. And the giant medicine bottle, instead of the nicely coloured medicine for today’s modern children, brings back not-so-fond memories of medicine from years gone by. I guess I can just think of this as a nostalgia strip. All those things I remember from my youth, including an Elly Patterson who cares for her kids.
Today I am with the Boy Scouts backpacking to a place called Hutches Pools, and I will not be snarking tomorrow’s strip for the Howard Bunt Blog. See you late Sunday or Monday.
In the meantime, the humidifier next to Michael brings back memories of when we used to have one of those. And of course, the look of sick Michael in bed alternatively reminds me of a muppet or a Charles Schulz drawing. I am not sure which one. And the giant medicine bottle, instead of the nicely coloured medicine for today’s modern children, brings back not-so-fond memories of medicine from years gone by. I guess I can just think of this as a nostalgia strip. All those things I remember from my youth, including an Elly Patterson who cares for her kids.
Today I am with the Boy Scouts backpacking to a place called Hutches Pools, and I will not be snarking tomorrow’s strip for the Howard Bunt Blog. See you late Sunday or Monday.
posted by howard at 10:58 PM
5 Comments:
Who the hell is going to recognize that weird clay-pot-looking contraption as a humidifier??
It probably only has steaming hot water (maybe spiked with a dollop of "Vicks Vapo-Rub") inside, and doesn't appear to plug into the wall, unlike today's humidifiers, with transparent water reservoirs and "cool mist action"...
It's not as if you're going to miss much. We'll probably have a reprint that has Elly feeling put upon and Monday's strip will have Elly deal with everyone else getting sick. Enjoy the time off.
This was a one-off in the original run (collection #1 again), but I wouldn't be surprised if LJ threw in some new-runs showing Elly caring for the entire family, all having caught the same thing, and capping off with reprints (from 51-52 pages later in the collection) showing Elly sick (three strips, one of which shows Michael riding in the front passenger seat, without a seatbelt).
I don't think the point is that Elly is concerned about how she looks. I give 1980(77?) LJ credit for a nice slice of life: She's probably up at 3 AM, she does look exhausted and disheveled, but she thinks back that as a child, when she was sick, seeing her mother come to help was so comforting that she remembers her mother looking wonderful, even though clearly she wouldn't have by any reasonable aesthetic standard.
This was one of the "for better"s - not funny, but about inner beauty for once.
Oh, and any amusement value for the strip (but it really is just "slice of life") is that now that Elly is the mother she gets that her mom was probably looking her worst when she remembers mom as looking her loveliest.
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