For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for November 27, 2017

You just seen Michael scream and then rip and shred Martha’s note to him. Janet believes Martha should have written “love” instead of “like.” Martha believes it is because Michael probably saw Janet reading the note he gave her and he is angry because she promised she wouldn’t show it to anybody.

Clearly comic strip characters draw interesting conclusions. What conclusions would you draw from seeing Michael scream and shred?:

a.Michael is off his meds.

b.Michael’s body was temporarily taken over by his mother.

c.Michael had a traumatic experience from some other person who put a note in his locker and to this day, when someone puts a note in his locker, he automatically shreds it while screaming.

d.Michael hates it when people write in cursive and use proper indentation and has to destroy anything written that way.

e.Michael noticed that the handwriting style is suspiciously like the way Lynn Johnston writes and he hates getting notes from the author.

f.Michael likes the way paper feels when he is shredding it.

g.Michael realized that Martha has the same name as both Batman and Superman’s mother.

now Martha’s between a rock and a hard place: girl friends (note the space) and boyfriend

You’ll have to choose who to keep your promises to Martha, your friends or Michael, though it may be too late for him if he won’t forgive you. Let it be a lesson to you.

Well, I guess she’s not a teacher after all. What an odd-looking kid.

Classic catch-22.

Female version of “Bros before Hos”.

She should have just been honest with Michael and told him that she shares everything with her two best friends. Don’t know how he’d handle it, but it would probably be better than this!

So far I’m not liking Martha’s friends.

Why do girls have to promise other girls to tell them what’s going on in their personal lives? As a girl myself, I always found this an invasion of my privacy. If there’s something I want to keep to myself, don’t bother me about it until I say fine. This same logic should apply to Martha, but she does a catch-22, promising both sets of people to not tell anybody something private and then telling her friends that exact private thing. Privacy is important.

Lynn’s Notes:

Interesting to see the word “like” becoming an essential and repetitive part of a kids’ vernacular. This strip was done in the 80s! I had no idea “like” had been so annoying for so long.

Martha seems like a very promising young lady. She’ll go far.

This would be me, coming to all the wrong conclusions.

The only way a promise can be kept between two people in this case is if one of them is dead! (None are of an age to truly understand what “A Promise” entails) Martha is, however, on the road to learning that very adult lesson.

Did they pinky swear? If not it isn’t valid.

Martha could have TOLD her friends about the note. and what it said, without letting them actually read it. That would have honored her promise to both sides.

Never put anything in writing.

She could have chosen not to mention the note. She could have just put it in her pocket and kept quiet. If they don’t ask about a note, she has an out.