Lawrence Wept
Valentine’s Day, 1981 was the publication date for this reprint of For Better or For Worse. Not very romantic, unless you consider the idea that after his accident, Lawrence Poirier is finally speaking with the one person on earth whom he thinks loves him. Notice that since the strip from last Saturday, Elly Patterson has once again changed her shirt before she called Connie to let her know what was going on. Elly may have tried to call Connie earlier, but as we can tell from today's strip, Lawrence did not see her do it, if she did.
After 5 days (and 3 Elly shirt changes) of this sequence, where no one has said a kind or comforting word to him, Lawrence's tears seem to be a reasonable reaction to me. Clearly the joke is one in a theme which Lynn Johnston visited many times over the years, i.e. children use fake tears in order to get what they want. This doesn’t work as well in this case, because Lawrence has a legitimate claim of injury, even if he does think his cast is neat and his injury was a result of his doing something not particularly intelligent.
Despite the use of instantaneous tears as a joke for this strip, it still raises the question as to why Lawrence is crying. Is he:
a. Trying to get sympathy from his mom.
b. Trying to make Elly Patterson look bad. I could go for this one, but we are missing the horrified look on Elly’s face in the final panel to make that one complete.
c. Trying to get his mom to come back home early.
d. Frustrated because he has been several days now unable to go to the bathroom, since he has been shown only able to use the one in his house last summer.
e. Trying to see if there is someone out there who actually cares that he is hurt (aside from us picky face readers).
f. Is finally talking to someone, whom he can trust, to let out his emotions.
It is this last one to which I can most easily relate. Last summer, I was up with our troop of Boy Scouts at the summer scout camp taking care of my boy and a bunch of other boys. At the end of the week, the parents come up and they see what’s been going on during the week. I had thought the week had gone pretty well, but came to discover that one boy had had a miserable time all week, and I had been completely unaware of it. One of the boys with whom he had been sharing a tent had been using obscenities at night time when it was lights out and no one could hear him except this other boy. It was not until his parents were there, did the boy finally tell someone what had been going on, and we were able to deal with the situation. He did not feel comfortable telling the adult leaders or any of the other boys in the camp about it all week long. As one of the adult leaders on the trip, I was not very happy when this happened, to say the least; and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I had missed that would have tipped me off something was wrong.
When this story about Lawrence breaking his leg came up again, I had expected to not be terribly happy about either Connie or Elly’s parenting skills. This sequence does present Connie Poirier at her absolute worst. I did not realize on close examination of the strip that we would have 5 days in a row without anyone at all comforting Lawrence. It reminded me of what occurred last summer. Lawrence Poirier is finally talking to his mom, someone he trusts, and crying his eyes out. Who can blame him? That's a lot of trauma for a 6-year-old boy to take on his own.
After 5 days (and 3 Elly shirt changes) of this sequence, where no one has said a kind or comforting word to him, Lawrence's tears seem to be a reasonable reaction to me. Clearly the joke is one in a theme which Lynn Johnston visited many times over the years, i.e. children use fake tears in order to get what they want. This doesn’t work as well in this case, because Lawrence has a legitimate claim of injury, even if he does think his cast is neat and his injury was a result of his doing something not particularly intelligent.
Despite the use of instantaneous tears as a joke for this strip, it still raises the question as to why Lawrence is crying. Is he:
a. Trying to get sympathy from his mom.
b. Trying to make Elly Patterson look bad. I could go for this one, but we are missing the horrified look on Elly’s face in the final panel to make that one complete.
c. Trying to get his mom to come back home early.
d. Frustrated because he has been several days now unable to go to the bathroom, since he has been shown only able to use the one in his house last summer.
e. Trying to see if there is someone out there who actually cares that he is hurt (aside from us picky face readers).
f. Is finally talking to someone, whom he can trust, to let out his emotions.
It is this last one to which I can most easily relate. Last summer, I was up with our troop of Boy Scouts at the summer scout camp taking care of my boy and a bunch of other boys. At the end of the week, the parents come up and they see what’s been going on during the week. I had thought the week had gone pretty well, but came to discover that one boy had had a miserable time all week, and I had been completely unaware of it. One of the boys with whom he had been sharing a tent had been using obscenities at night time when it was lights out and no one could hear him except this other boy. It was not until his parents were there, did the boy finally tell someone what had been going on, and we were able to deal with the situation. He did not feel comfortable telling the adult leaders or any of the other boys in the camp about it all week long. As one of the adult leaders on the trip, I was not very happy when this happened, to say the least; and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I had missed that would have tipped me off something was wrong.
When this story about Lawrence breaking his leg came up again, I had expected to not be terribly happy about either Connie or Elly’s parenting skills. This sequence does present Connie Poirier at her absolute worst. I did not realize on close examination of the strip that we would have 5 days in a row without anyone at all comforting Lawrence. It reminded me of what occurred last summer. Lawrence Poirier is finally talking to his mom, someone he trusts, and crying his eyes out. Who can blame him? That's a lot of trauma for a 6-year-old boy to take on his own.
posted by howard at 1:54 PM
6 Comments:
When this story about Lawrence breaking his leg came up again, I had expected to not be terribly happy about either Connie or Elly’s parenting skills. This sequence does present Connie Poirier at her absolute worst. I did not realize on close examination of the strip that we would have 5 days in a row without anyone at all comforting Lawrence.
It's about to get worse; tomorrow's new-ruin seems to be based on the premise that Connie believes that he deliberately injured himself to keep her single. As if we needed another reminder of how selfish and hateful Lynn can be.
I know that in the original 1981 publication, the strip set for tomorrow is Connie's Poirier's lowest moment in all of the 30 years of the strip. I can understand why Lynn might want to alter it to try to make her look better. Naturally I am delighted by this, because the rule is "Whenever Lynn tries to make someone look better, she makes them look worse." I can hardly wait.
I think forworse is right to assume that Connie will thought-bubble that she's worse off than Lawrence because her heart is broken.
I think he's crying because he's the size of a 12-year-old for the first panels, and then in the last one he's shrunk to a six-year-old.
DreadedCandiru2,
I think forworse is right to assume that Connie will thought-bubble that she's worse off than Lawrence because her heart is broken.
I guess that’s possible, but the heart break shouldn’t occur until she’s actually tried to get together with Phil.
josephusrex,
I think he's crying because he's the size of a 12-year-old for the first panels, and then in the last one he's shrunk to a six-year-old.
It just goes to show that if Lynn draws the character long enough, she will eventually draw one that is at the right age. I think it is kind of like the stopped clock being right 2 times a day.
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