Thursday, September 03, 2009

Miss Campbell - Master of Discipline

Well, Miss Campbell is certainly a hardass calling down Michael Patterson by name for writing an “M” on his paper in today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse. If this is going to be Lynn Johnston’s idea of Michael being a disruptive influence in his Grade 1 class, then I am going to love the new-runs for their snarkability. The disappointment of today’s strip is that this is Friday and Michael did not go over to Deanna Sobinski to find out why she is back in town. Lynn Johnston’s nonlinear style of story-telling can be frustrating at times. I suppose this means the subject will be touched on in Saturday’s strip. Of course the other possibility is that Lynn will not touch on the subject at all, since her only objective is to get Deanna back so she can be in the scheduled reprints. Why Deanna is really back is unimportant compared to that.

As for the joke of the strip, we have a pun on the words “pay” and “cost”, which no Grade 1 kids would ever say. One odd part is when young Michael says, “I wonder why they always say…” As this is Michael first day in class, it seems a little unlikely that he would have drawn some kind of universal conclusion about what teachers do or do not say. I can only presume from the comment, that Michael’s teacher in preschool /kindergarten had a similar problem with Michael’s attention span. Likewise, Lawrence’s comment about “it’s gonna cost ya!!” seems odd considering that it is also his first day in Grade 1 and he should be completely unfamiliar with the punishment techniques of Grade 1 teachers. I can only presume that Lawrence’s teacher in preschool /kindergarten was big into punishment. The more natural conclusion is that Lynn Johnston is trying to write a strip which she expects teachers will clip out and put on their refrigerators. Teachers are the people for whom the dialogue seems to be intended.

6 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Well, Miss Campbell is certainly a hardass calling down Michael Patterson by name for writing an “M” on his paper in today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse. If this is going to be Lynn Johnston’s idea of Michael being a disruptive influence in his Grade 1 class, then I am going to love the new-runs for their snarkability.

What's next? Reading him the riot act for using American spelling? Declaring him the Antichrist because he drops his yods and colors outside the lines? Whatever the stressor, you can bet that it'll be ridiculous. Campbell's being at her wit's end and whining that a clumsy, naive, stubborn, slow-witted and literal-minded little boy is running rings around her makes her a classic buffoon, the equal of Elly.

The more natural conclusion is that Lynn Johnston is trying to write a strip which she expects teachers will clip out and put on their refrigerators. Teachers are the people for whom the dialogue seems to be intended.

That's for sure; she loves doing stuff like that.

10:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kids that age do NOT equate the "pay" in "pay attention" as meaning the same thing as "pay money" (in fact, many kids that age still have a lot of trouble grasping the very concept of puns yet.)

It's a big world of language out there, and they have heard a number of synonyms - to them, it will be simply a pattern they've gotten used to, and they hear "payattention" as if were one word with one meaning. When they learn to spell big vocabulary words such as "attention", it becomes more clear that it's the same "pay".

10:52 PM  
Blogger howard said...

DreadedCandiru2,

Campbell's being at her wit's end and whining that a clumsy, naive, stubborn, slow-witted and literal-minded little boy is running rings around her makes her a classic buffoon, the equal of Elly.

As I have said before, in For Better or For Worse every character is Lynn Johnston. All the way from the exasperated teacher to the exasperated mother to the 6-year-old making puns on the word “pay”.

4:50 AM  
Blogger howard said...

Anonymous,

Kids that age do NOT equate the "pay" in "pay attention" as meaning the same thing as "pay money" (in fact, many kids that age still have a lot of trouble grasping the very concept of puns yet.)

You are absolutely correct. My daughter was very proud of a joke she made up a few years ago when she was 9, which used the word “bee” and the word “behind” to make “bee-hind”. “What do you get when a bee stings your butt? A bee-hind.” When she was 6 years old, a joke like that was beyond her language abilities, and she is considered to be advanced for her age.

4:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Michael Patterson....as menacing as Dennis the Menace?

(Fans of Comics Curmudgeon know Denis is completely not menacing and a mild annoyance at best.)

6:18 AM  
Blogger howard said...

albuqwirkymom,

Michael Patterson....as menacing as Dennis the Menace?

This is a good comparison. The antics of Michael Patterson from 1980 were based in part on Dennis the Menace from the 1970s, who was a good deal more menacing than he is today. New-run Michael Patterson from 2008-2009 is a milquetoast, just like the modern-day Dennis. The really menacing Dennis was the one from the 1950s.

1:37 PM  

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