She’s Worth $500 a Pound
I had to read today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse a few times to figure out what Anne Nichols is saying. She pays $10 a week to a weight control clinic until she reaches her goal. Her husband Steve thinks that Anne has no will power. Steve believes that it will take Anne $500 or 50 weeks to lose one pound. Judging from the big mound of cookies in front of Anne, he may be right, but to say that out loud? Is he crazy? For some reason, in the land where Anne and Elly live, husbands are brutally honest. Just 2 days ago, John Patterson said the magic left his relationship with Elly when she stopped putting on makeup before breakfast. Why is it that Connie Poirier wants to be married again, if this is what husbands are like?
As for the $10 a week, that fee seems pretty high by 1979 standards. Current Weight Watchers traditional meetings cost between $10-12 per week depending on local variation. My guess is that this text has been edited and unlike the jogging suit strip price alteration, it looks like Lynn Johnston did a little research instead of just making something up. Will wonders never cease?
In Lynn Johnston’s latest entry in her new Coffee Talk Blog, she talks about how she was “so sarcastic and perhaps a little negative at the time (1979).” Judging from today’s reprint, that is definitely an understatement.
As for the $10 a week, that fee seems pretty high by 1979 standards. Current Weight Watchers traditional meetings cost between $10-12 per week depending on local variation. My guess is that this text has been edited and unlike the jogging suit strip price alteration, it looks like Lynn Johnston did a little research instead of just making something up. Will wonders never cease?
In Lynn Johnston’s latest entry in her new Coffee Talk Blog, she talks about how she was “so sarcastic and perhaps a little negative at the time (1979).” Judging from today’s reprint, that is definitely an understatement.
posted by howard at 9:32 PM
5 Comments:
I'll say that's an understatement; it finally seems to have sunk in that people are right to talk about the negativity in the new-ruins. Too bad that her solution is to retreat even further into her fantasy bubble.
The new-runs she can control. The reprints are a different matter. Either she is going to have to get out of the habit of selecting only the ones that slam men, or she will have to rewrite them. As soon as we go back to some new-runs, we will be able to see just how serious she is about cutting back on negativity. I expect that we will still see the negativity with the reprints.
I expect you're right; we know that she's even more hostile and bitter than she was back in 1979 because her life hasn't turned out how she wanted it to. That means that we'll see more martyrdom from Elly, more brattiness from the offsprings and more loutishness from John. Also more poo jokes and raspberries.
My guess is that this text has been edited and unlike the jogging suit strip price alteration, it looks like Lynn Johnston did a little research instead of just making something up.
Good call. I checked the collection, and the original figures were $3.00/week and $45/pound. Steve has gotten meaner.
aprilp_katje,
I checked the collection, and the original figures were $3.00/week and $45/pound. Steve has gotten meaner.-
Assuming that the $3 rate is correct for 1979, Steve has moved from 15 weeks to 50 weeks. The Weight Watchers sessions of class run for 12 week sets. That’s reasonably close to 15. I suppose if you are going to make Steve meaner, it wouldn’t make much sense if he paid attention to what Anne would have said the timeline for the sessions was.
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