For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 18, 2017

Welcome to the Mike’s club, Miss.

She asks a question that is put so indelicately you can see why she has a hard time getting along with people, if the first things she asks someone new is if they are some kind of nut case? Most people would not take that question very well, but most people are not Michael Patterson.

That’s the girl he crushed on – Martha, I think. His first teenage love, besides Deanna, his future wife on whom he crushed in the elementary school before she moved.

Oh good, they’re not alone now.

Loners are their own worst enemy. (voice of experience)

I remember: I wasn’t well-liked in school. One day, in junior high, I saw a girl who looked very lonely and was being picked on, and I went to make friends with her. She & I hung out together. Eventually, even our mothers made friends! Then her mother moved her out of public school into a Catholic school. Soon after, she called me and said that the ONLY reason she was unpopular was because SHE hung out with ME! (It took a lot longer for my mother to see her mother’s true colors…like, about 20 years.)

Welcome to the party, Martha MacRae. I’ve been waiting for you to appear because you were my favorite of Mike’s girlfriends.

But I remember you as a redhead, not a blonde.

Here we go.

Think of how guilty Michael would be feeling right now if his plan to peek into the girl’s shower worked and he’d seen her in the “all-together.”

Mike, meet Martha. Martha, meet Mike.

♫One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do

Two can be as bad as one

It’s the loneliest number since the number one♪

There’s nothing as sweet as a festival . . . er- Camp . . . fling!

By the way – she nailed it – only wierdos like us talk to ourselves animatedly!

Sounds like love to me.

Oh, oh. Budding summer romance. He could really get into trouble now.

At least they have something in common!

badda-bing