Saturday, November 28, 2009

Is she my REAL mother?

Today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse falls into a category of strips I would describe as “strips that make sense when you consider that Rod Johnston was Lynn’s son Aaron’s step-father.” I can imagine little Aaron Johnston over a period of time becoming aware of the differences between fathers and step-fathers. I can imagine him becoming aware that Rod was not his birth father. I can even imagine a young Aaron Johnston after a particularly difficult time dealing with his mother wondering if Rod and Lynn got it mixed up who was the step-parent.

As for me and my kids, we have never stepped down this trail. However, we have stepped down a different, but similar trail. Once my kids got old enough to understand what was dating was and understood that the reason they have 4 sets of grandparents instead of the standard 2 sets; they occasionally would ask questions like: If you married someone else, what would I look like? If you didn’t get married would I exist? These questions are kind of similar to the one little Michael asked.

As for this particular strip, the part I would find interesting is to learn why Michael thought Elly was not his mother. I would also be interested in knowing if this situation was taken from a real-life situation between Lynn and Aaron. There are a number of possibilities here for Michael’s question:

a. Michael doesn’t like cleaning, but Elly is obsessed with it.
b. Michael doesn’t like screaming, but Elly is obsessed with it.
c. Michael doesn’t like be in a bad mood all the time, but Elly is obsessed with it.
d. Michael secretly hopes that there is a woman out there who likes him, since Elly never seems to be happy with him.

Sadly, (d) is the one I can imagine being true-to-life. One of things I have recognized as we have gone through the For Better or For Worse reprints from the first year is, aside from Lynn Johnston doing so many “John is a male chauvenist pig” strips, the other character who takes a beating is young Michael Patterson. Once Aaron Johnston got the point where he could read, and he recognized he was Michael from his middle name, he might start to wonder why there were so many comic strips featuring him as a little hellion making life difficult for his mother.

5 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

howard,


d. Michael secretly hopes that there is a woman out there who likes him, since Elly never seems to be happy with him.

It's things like this that make it so easy to understand why Aaron doesn't have much of a relationship with Lynn; knowing her, it's his taking her constant reminders that she thought of him as an annoying obstacle to her happiness too seriously.

10:09 PM  
Blogger howard said...

It's been pretty apparent from his lack of being mentioned by Lynn, that in the divorce Aaron did not join Team Lynn along with his sister and his aunt. The surprising part to me was to realize just how many strips there were in the first year with a negative portrayal of Michael. I had thought there would be more cute kid moments.

6:49 AM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

The surprising part to me was to realize just how many strips there were in the first year with a negative portrayal of Michael. I had thought there would be more cute kid moments.

So did I, initially; it's amazing how awfully he's treated and how much Elly loves to play the victim while she's bullying him. It also proves that the bad parenting you associate with the Pattersons has always been a factor of Foob Life.

12:46 PM  
Anonymous Stephanie Hawks said...

Yes, I wonder how Aaron Johnston felt about his middle name being used for the little monster depicted in his mother's strip. Lynn Johnston claims that she used her children's middle names in the strip instead of their first names for privacy reasons, but then she told every interviewer that her characters had the same middle names as her real-life family. So much for privacy. I'm sure that Aaron was upset about his middle name being used for a cartoon "bad boy."

Lynn Johnston should have read my high school creative writing textbook. The section on writing children's books cautions, "If you have a villain in your story, or even a "bad" boy or girl, use an uncommon name. Sally and Jacky may be reduced to tears if they are called wicked." [italics in original]
(Joan Berbrich, Writing Creatively, Amsco School Publications, New York, NY, 1977, page 413)

4:13 PM  
Anonymous Stephanie Hawks said...

As you can see, I kept my high school Creative Writing textbook. I also kept my Humanities (art history, music appreciation, and literary history) textbook, my book of art prints from Humanities class, my French textbooks, my American literature textbook, my British literature textbook, and my Biology I textbook. What a geek I was! I still think that Lynn Johnston should have read Joan Berbrich's Writing Creatively. She could have learned a lot from that book.

4:32 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home