Lizzie Prefers Her Bunnies to be Dirty Bunnies
The prediction by many had been that Lynn Johnston would finish out this reprinted story arc of John’s clothing transgressions in For Better or For Worse by showing the last strip of the sequence with Connie and Elly talking about Pete's (Connie’s ex) quirks over a cup of coffee and coming to the conclusion that men are pigs. Instead Lynn has chosen to reprint one of the more unusual strips of the early years actually showing little Lizzie going to John for a problem she has. As it turns out, Lizzie’s problem with something her mother did to her stuffed bunny, i.e. washing. Horrors! As a side note, I like the first panel where Lizzie is holding the bunny by its ears, and the bunny looks like it is in pain.
In order for the joke to work you have to accept:
a. Lizzie is able to recognize that because her stuffed bunny has been washed, there is something about it that is not what she likes about it.
b. Lizzie is able to recognize that the source of her problems is her mother.
With my daughter, her favourite stuffed creature was a Barney who wore footie pyjamas, whom we called Jama Barney. Back in 2001, we went to my sister’s wedding in Connecticut and my daughter left her Jama Barney in the hotel room where we were staying. She was distraught and cried every time she thought about it. She would have been 4 years old at the time. We went back to the hotel room when we realized what had happened and the Barney was gone. Not only that, but when we offered my daughter another Jama Barney (bigger than her original, because the foul manufacturers stopped making the one she had), she rejected it. After some effort, my wife located an exact duplicate on E-bay, had it shipped to us, and made surgical operations on it so that it matched my daughter’s exactly. We were nervous that she would detect some difference and reject the Jama Barney. Fortunately she didn’t. She was happy to have it back. And then a few months later, she somehow managed to leave the Jama Barney in a refrigerator freezer where it went undetected for a long time. This was a small party refrigerator which is not regularly used and the freezer section was just big enough to hold Jama Barney. After much searching, we finally found him again to the relief of my daughter.
And yet despite all this, we regularly washed that Jama Barney and my daughter never complained about it. Not only that, but she never blamed her mother or her father for any of her Jama Barney’s disappearances. I’m not saying that the events of today’s strip couldn’t happen. It just doesn’t match my own experience.
My son, on the other hand, is sensitive to certain kinds of detergents, and if we washed something of his in a detergent which gave him a rash, then he would complain about it. However, I do not think that Lizzie’s complain with her bunny is a complaint of that variety. Unless, of course, this was based on a real-life situation and Lynn Johnston simply did not understand why her daughter was complaining. That, I can easily believe, especially after the incident with her daughter and the unwashed carrots in Mexico.
In order for the joke to work you have to accept:
a. Lizzie is able to recognize that because her stuffed bunny has been washed, there is something about it that is not what she likes about it.
b. Lizzie is able to recognize that the source of her problems is her mother.
With my daughter, her favourite stuffed creature was a Barney who wore footie pyjamas, whom we called Jama Barney. Back in 2001, we went to my sister’s wedding in Connecticut and my daughter left her Jama Barney in the hotel room where we were staying. She was distraught and cried every time she thought about it. She would have been 4 years old at the time. We went back to the hotel room when we realized what had happened and the Barney was gone. Not only that, but when we offered my daughter another Jama Barney (bigger than her original, because the foul manufacturers stopped making the one she had), she rejected it. After some effort, my wife located an exact duplicate on E-bay, had it shipped to us, and made surgical operations on it so that it matched my daughter’s exactly. We were nervous that she would detect some difference and reject the Jama Barney. Fortunately she didn’t. She was happy to have it back. And then a few months later, she somehow managed to leave the Jama Barney in a refrigerator freezer where it went undetected for a long time. This was a small party refrigerator which is not regularly used and the freezer section was just big enough to hold Jama Barney. After much searching, we finally found him again to the relief of my daughter.
And yet despite all this, we regularly washed that Jama Barney and my daughter never complained about it. Not only that, but she never blamed her mother or her father for any of her Jama Barney’s disappearances. I’m not saying that the events of today’s strip couldn’t happen. It just doesn’t match my own experience.
My son, on the other hand, is sensitive to certain kinds of detergents, and if we washed something of his in a detergent which gave him a rash, then he would complain about it. However, I do not think that Lizzie’s complain with her bunny is a complaint of that variety. Unless, of course, this was based on a real-life situation and Lynn Johnston simply did not understand why her daughter was complaining. That, I can easily believe, especially after the incident with her daughter and the unwashed carrots in Mexico.
posted by howard at 9:28 PM
7 Comments:
To understand why something upsets someone, first you have to care. From Elly's expression in the final panel, it is quite clear that she does not care.
howard,
Unless, of course, this was based on a real-life situation and Lynn Johnston simply did not understand why her daughter was complaining. That, I can easily believe, especially after the incident with her daughter and the unwashed carrots in Mexico.
I have to agree with Clio on this one; for Lynn to understand why it is that Katie was so upset, she'd have to care about what she felt. Since she doesn't seem to have it in her to feel empathy, her child's tears are a baffling annoyance and display of ingratitude.
"we regularly washed that Jama Barney and my daughter never complained about it."
Some kids don't complain it a toy is washed, particularly kids who got the toy when they very young and experienced the regular washed-smell fairly often. I'm guessing Lizzie's bunny has not been washed in a long time (or possibly never before), and she has had it long enough that the change is fairly significant and really startling to her.
Since she doesn't seem to have it in her to feel empathy, her child's tears are a baffling annoyance and display of ingratitude.
I was having the same thought about lack of empathy, dc2.
Now that I see LJ has opted to skip over the coffee-with-Connie finale to her "John has no fashion sense and is henpecked" arc, I'll share what we missed:
--------------------------------
Elly and Connie are having coffee and lumpy baked goods that are in a dish between them.
Panel 1:
Connie: I never complained about Pet's clothes...
Panel 2: Elly is reaching down towards Lizzie, who is on the floor reaching up to her.
Connie: He was a perfect dresser. --Always in the latest style.
Panel 3: Elly has Nizzie on her lap, and Nizzie is holding one baked good while reaching for another.
Connie: His clothes were perfect, his hair was perfect--he LOOKED fantastic!
Panel 4: Liz is eating one baked good while holding her other baked good over the dish.
Connie: --Like that thin plywood with the walnut veneer.
---------------------------
So, to be fair, the message wasn't "men are pigs" so much as it was that Pete was a pig. Actually, it seems to suggest that Elly should be thankful that although John dresses like a dork, he's basically a "good guy." This could be an early incarnation of Lynn's "watch out for good-looking guys with fashion sense" leitmotif (see Eric, Warren, Paul).
(BTW, I have reached the point where I'm unsure as to whether a strip is super-familiar because I've run into it in a collection a zillion times, or whether it's already been rerun. Has LJ rerun that one already?)
Oh--and the one that ran after the strip I described above is a continuation of the Elly/Connie conversation, only it's the one where they're happily saying "Yack yack yack," until John passes by, causing them to clam up. Then they resume yack-yacking once he has passed.
DreadedCandiru2
Since she doesn't seem to have it in her to feel empathy, her child's tears are a baffling annoyance and display of ingratitude.
I agree with you. That is exactly the way the strip comes off. The startling contrast is that John is the one feeling empathy for Lizzie. Elly usually is the one reacting to a crying child, so I would have to think that in this instance the difference is that Lizzie’s crying is in reaction to one of Elly’s main reasons for being – cleaning. She has little sympathy for anyone who complains about her cleaning, even if they are young.
Anonymous,
I'm guessing Lizzie's bunny has not been washed in a long time (or possibly never before), and she has had it long enough that the change is fairly significant and really startling to her.
That is certainly reasonable, even if it is out-of-character for Elly the cleaning machine, and kind of grosses me out that Lizzie’s bunny reached such a state.
aprilp_katje,
Given your description of the Elly and Connie strip and given that Pete represents Lynn’s first husband and John represents Lynn’s second husband, I can see that the strip originally was intended for Lynn to show herself why Rod was preferred to her good-looking first husband Doug, despite Rod’s Lynn Lake-style dressing habits. As for why the strip wasn’t reprinted, I think it is either because it makes John / Rod look good (and Lynn has consistently avoided reprinting any strips that did that out of her old story sequences) or because, as you pointed out, there is a strip following it, which means Lynn could run those 2 strips next week and fill them in with a few new-runs.
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