Pattersons Eat Better Than Pigs, But Not Much
In today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse, Lynn Johnston has reprinted a strip she reprinted just last July 3. In homage to that reprinting, I will now repeat what I put in the Howard Bunt Blog last July 3. If Lynn Johnston can do it, then so can I.
In today’s For Better or For Worse Elly complains about Michael eating like a pig and she commands Michael to slow down. Michael protests that if he slows down for liver & spinach, he will taste it. Personally I like spinach. I am not so fond of liver. However, I understand the basic sense of it. Those are 2 foods traditionally most kids hate. Michael is hungry, but can’t stand the taste of his food; so he has found a way to get around that. Honestly, speed is not a bad method. It’s better than refusing to eat at all.It reminds me of the story I heard about the man who learned how to survive in a prison situation on bread and water. The prison was dirty and infested with insects. The line was that if you use your bread to surround the cockroaches, they don’t taste nearly so bad. Or, the other story I remember is my grandparents who survived the Great Depression telling me things like, “You can eat dandelions and grass, if you cook them long enough.” So, really this is a story of human survival in many respects.The easy way to go is to criticize Elly for being hypocritical. We know this from the retrospective of seeing strips from 1979 to 2008 where Lynn Johnston has shown the Patterson family, consistently through the years, as completely disgusting slobs when it comes to eating food. This is 1979, when Lynn Johnston is just starting. Maybe her vision of Elly Patterson, food slob, has not yet been formed.But look at the strip carefully. When Elly says, “Where are your manners, Michael!”, there is no question mark. Then she does not tell Michael not to drool or slobber or spill his drink on the table or use a knife or use a napkin. She wants him to slow down because he is eating like a pig. In other words, the problem is one of speed, not cleanliness. The pattern is set here at the beginning. A Patterson can eat like a slob, but not a fast slob. Now there’s a lesson for us all.
On a personal note: My wife is entrenched in her hospital visit with her mother. She is conscious but loopy, and still in ICU. Apparently the infection she got with her cancer treatment damaged her kidneys and she has a creatinine test measurement of 4.5, where 1 is considered good. The doctor is waiting for her kidneys to recover before she gets to leave the ICU, and the doctor thinks it will happen in the next 3-4 days. In the meantime, she is undergoing physical and speech therapy. It’s shocking how much you can lose from being unconscious 6 days. Her mother is too weak to hold even a spoon. Something I did not know if that if you have been intubated for 6 days, you can experience a sore throat for up to a year after it happens. On the plus side, my wife has no doubt that her mother is relatively lucid and recognizes that she is there.
In today’s For Better or For Worse Elly complains about Michael eating like a pig and she commands Michael to slow down. Michael protests that if he slows down for liver & spinach, he will taste it. Personally I like spinach. I am not so fond of liver. However, I understand the basic sense of it. Those are 2 foods traditionally most kids hate. Michael is hungry, but can’t stand the taste of his food; so he has found a way to get around that. Honestly, speed is not a bad method. It’s better than refusing to eat at all.It reminds me of the story I heard about the man who learned how to survive in a prison situation on bread and water. The prison was dirty and infested with insects. The line was that if you use your bread to surround the cockroaches, they don’t taste nearly so bad. Or, the other story I remember is my grandparents who survived the Great Depression telling me things like, “You can eat dandelions and grass, if you cook them long enough.” So, really this is a story of human survival in many respects.The easy way to go is to criticize Elly for being hypocritical. We know this from the retrospective of seeing strips from 1979 to 2008 where Lynn Johnston has shown the Patterson family, consistently through the years, as completely disgusting slobs when it comes to eating food. This is 1979, when Lynn Johnston is just starting. Maybe her vision of Elly Patterson, food slob, has not yet been formed.But look at the strip carefully. When Elly says, “Where are your manners, Michael!”, there is no question mark. Then she does not tell Michael not to drool or slobber or spill his drink on the table or use a knife or use a napkin. She wants him to slow down because he is eating like a pig. In other words, the problem is one of speed, not cleanliness. The pattern is set here at the beginning. A Patterson can eat like a slob, but not a fast slob. Now there’s a lesson for us all.
On a personal note: My wife is entrenched in her hospital visit with her mother. She is conscious but loopy, and still in ICU. Apparently the infection she got with her cancer treatment damaged her kidneys and she has a creatinine test measurement of 4.5, where 1 is considered good. The doctor is waiting for her kidneys to recover before she gets to leave the ICU, and the doctor thinks it will happen in the next 3-4 days. In the meantime, she is undergoing physical and speech therapy. It’s shocking how much you can lose from being unconscious 6 days. Her mother is too weak to hold even a spoon. Something I did not know if that if you have been intubated for 6 days, you can experience a sore throat for up to a year after it happens. On the plus side, my wife has no doubt that her mother is relatively lucid and recognizes that she is there.
posted by howard at 11:08 PM
6 Comments:
howard,In other words, the problem is one of speed, not cleanliness. The pattern is set here at the beginning. A Patterson can eat like a slob, but not a fast slob. Now there’s a lesson for us all.It's not much of one; then again, most of the moral lessons that the Pattersons teach us are, at best, questionable.
As for real life, that's encouraging news. I realize that she's got a lot to recover from but I hope she does so quickly.
dreadedcandiru2,
Thanks for the kind thoughts about my mother-in-law.
You're welcome.
Oh wow, I'm glad your mother-in-law is starting to pull through! That's some interesting tidbits on hospital stays that I didn't know about!
I'll be thinking of your MIL and family.
I think you'll have to explain to me about the bread surrounding the cockroaches, though! I just didn't get it. Maybe I'm too tired? How would the bread taste better if the cockroaches has been eating it?
Maybe it has to do with the cockroaches on it adding flavor.
What I find surprising is the cause for the traditional hatred of spinach and liver is often overlooked, even in reality.
The fact of the matter is that the most common method of serving spinach to small children is by steaming it. Liver is usually fried in a pan (or at least, that's how my mom served it).
Steamed spinach tends to have a very strong, rather bitter aftertaste - strong enough to be rather unpleasant, as a kid; and steaming it makes it look rather unappealing, in addition to the strong taste.
There are ways to get around this - there are several other ways of preparing spinach that I can think of off the top of my head, and liver doesn't have to be pan-fried - but this is Elly's cooking we're talking about. It's portrayed as being poor, even when she's not serving a kid's two most loathed foods; if there's ever someone who would manage to make spinach and liver taste bad to an adult, it's Elly - one can only cringe, on imagining what it must be like for a kid.
As for reality, while it is discouraging to hear that she's had to be put on dialysis, at least this way her kidneys will be able to recover (slow as it might be). I do hope that she makes a steady recover, though.
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