For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 28, 2013

If I were a smoker trying to quit and teaching my nephew trumpeting, I’d go for a toothpick.

Good one, Lizzie.

I can’t help it, I have to say it. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

@howtheduck — maybe Lizzie just had it in the back of a drawer or something. Nothing indicates she’s still using it.

Atta girl, Lizzie…tell him to “PUT A PLUG IN IT”.

Way to go, Elizabeth!!!

Or maybe both at the same time??

What? No comments about how Phil is yelling at Michael? Or is that criticism only reserved for Elly? Sometimes I think family giving classes to a child is more difficult than giving classes to a stranger.

if she was a thumb sucker then I would rather give her a pacifier than a thumb. My grand daughter sucked her thumb until she was 8 and now has to have massive orthodontic work.

I guess this could help explain why those trying to give up smoking gain weight. He may decide to eat something or find a piece of candy to have instead of the cigarette. Lizzy’s suggestion is a good one, pacifiers are calorie free.

Cigarettes, pacifiers, same thing!

Poor Michael not playing the trumpet right and bad Phil smoking withdrawal. Lizzi putting Uncle in place treating him as a baby.

This just in… Your sarcasm detector is broken.

Go Lizzie! LOL!

Hilarious!

Irritability..a sign of withdrawal.Pacify him Elizabeth! :)

Uh, this just in…Lizzie dad is a dentist…

Apparently the sarcasm [not to mention irony] of howtheduck’s statement was lost on you. Absolutely everyone here knows that John is a dentist!!!!!

From yesterday’s debate:

@HawthorneThat is just SO wrong. I cannot go to any given public place without a very good chance of encountering smoke. I go to, say, Walmart for groceries. Good chance of smoke in the parking lot. If I’m on my bicycle I have to lock it up to one of the signs close to the front……where shoppers and workers are smoking. Let’s say this is one of the very few times that no one is out front. I park my bike, and, there it is….smoke. Where is it coming from? I look around at the butts on the ground. Which one is lit? I find it, and kill it. I don’t have time to keep looking, so I hope that was the last. I go inside. Now my throat is sore.

I have my groceries. I step out to my bike to unlock it. Three smokers are standing just upwind. I wait for them to get through. Twenty minutes pass. They’re gone now. I step out again, but now smoke is coming from up at the other entrance, blowing across the front of the store. A lot of good it did me to wait. My frozen stuff is getting warm. I can’t wait. I have to load my bike while standing in the cloud. I unlock it, and quickly jump on it. But it’s too late, my head hurts. I’m now looking at a three mile ride with a headache, and praying that this isn’t a migraine. A ride that would normally be pleasant is now an ordeal.

And now I’m very unhappy. And why? Because people who really do know better are too weak to help themselves, and are not concerned enough about others to find that little extra strength that having a little care for others might provide. All they are concerned about is this stupid habit. So much so that they will lie to themselves, believing their own specious excuses, in order to keep poisoning themselves.

There’s a great Dave Berg cartoon like this. In brief, a guy has quit smoking and taken up chewing gum. His wife berates him for having an oral fixation and orders him to find another substitute. So he spits out the gum and starts sucking his thumb!

Love it.

Wine going down the wrong windpipe does not bode well, but I LMAO at this one! That last panel is PRICELESS!