For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 15, 2013

Lizzie says the darnedest things.

I tried to tell my wife that once!

I once looked down and found a small child standing next to me holding onto my pants. Turned out her Mom and I were wearing the same type and color of pants. Mom was nearby and the little girl wasn’t too traumatized.

It happened to me when I was little.

Once when I was about 3 years old, I ran up and yelled “Hey, Daddy” to the wrong guy! He had on the same color pants as my dad.

right out of “Home Alone”

I remember a Calvin & Hobbes where Calvin was following the wrong woman. When she asked what his Mom looked like, he said “From the knees down, she looks just like you.”

That does happen, but I was wondering why Elly was not holding her hand. In a busy airport like that with a child that young, I would definitely be holding her hand and checking down periodically to make sure she was still there!!!

John went to get Michael, Ellie went to find Liz. That’s why you have 2 parents.

So scary! I just did this- 2 adults, 3 small kids at the airport, many bags and such to carry. I did the exact same thing as Ellie- got through security, situated bags, got to busy place and asked 4 year old for her hand. Luckily, mine was right there!

Interestingly, Lizzie totally lies. She never followed another adult. She went straight for the photo thingy, the instant they arrived, right before Ellie did the “Hold my hand- it’s a busy place” spiel. 4 year olds lie to avoid getting in trouble.

And parents get angry out of their fear and love.

Makes no sense, but it’s true. We’re lucky family is forgiving!

this is what adults see...this is what a child would see...This is why it’s so hard for children to find their parents. So many of them have similar clothes, shapes, and sizes. How many women, in a typical airport, do you think are size 6-8, and are wearing jeans … just take a guess? I can’t figure it out either.

hmmm I never remembered doing that?

When my brother was a toddler-little kid he would give my mom a heart attack, he would just wonder off (at the beach, mall….parade. He would just get out of the stroller and wonder off

@ JPuzzleWhiz ~ That was me who called it. :→

Really, Liz? How come you snuck into that photo booth? Neither your mom or the “wrong legs” went in there. You need to come up with a better excuse. Better yet, Elly, carry Liz or hold her hands in a busy place. I’ve seen mothers with poor common sense and it seems Elly was one of those. At least she used it to go to security desk to ask for help rather than running through the airport to try to find Liz.

I actually did the same thing as an adult once. Standing in front of a rack of movies to rent I reached over a took the black-jacketed arm next to me. The poor guy jumped a foot, at which I jumped a foot before being terribly embarrassed. My husband was the black jacket on my OTHER side.

It would be easy to follow the wrong legs when Mom’s pants magically change color!(see panels 3 & 4)

Yepper. Standing in line at a burger joint one day, and an adorable little toddler tries to tackle me from behind yelling ‘Daddy!’. Toddler’s cute mommy was mortified, but I thought it was funny as heck, and mommy calmed down quickly. When you are less than 3 feet tall, all six foot guys in blue jeans look alike.

My mother once observed that when a little one yells ‘Mommy!’ in a grocery store or wherever, you can tell who is a mother by watching who instantly turns to respond, even if their kids are not there, or long past that age.

Not much else for a kid to see at that level. Ellie was reaching down to grab her hand when she noticed Elizabeth was not there and she had been there in the previous panel.

I had something quite similar happen to me in a church one afternoon. Little girl came running up to me and latched on around my knees. Now, I knew this little girl, and her parents, to whom I was speaking at the time. So I looked down, she looked up — and went to red alert, screaming like a banshee. Apparently, she mistook me for her father, who was standing next to me. When she saw my face though she was expecting her dad’s, she refused to be consoled, not even when her dad picked her up.

Some of you folks took me WAY too seriously. I was only joking.

Some of the post-ers on this particular story arc seem to miss the point of a comic strip like FBOFW, which is to parallel real family life in order to make humorous but nail-on-the-head observations about parents and children via a few short panels. Artists like Lynn Johnston have a gift for speaking volumes in very little space. It takes the ability to take complex situations, establish and reduce them to their most basic essentials. That’s not as easy to do is it may seem. Lynn loosely based her comic strip on her own family, with some artistic license. As a result, her audience can recognize and laugh at themselves as they laugh at her stories.

Some of the post-ers on this particular story arc seem to miss the point of a comic strip like FBOFW, which is to parallel real family life in order to make humorous but nail-on-the-head observations about parents and children via a few short panels. Artists like Lynn Johnston have a gift for speaking volumes in very little space. It takes the ability to take complex situations, establish and reduce them to their most basic essentials. That’s not as easy to do is it may seem. Lynn loosely based her comic strip on her own family, with some artistic license. As a result, her audience can recognize and laugh at themselves as they laugh at her stories.