For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for November 01, 2018

This is embarrassing, John. It is just a car and the body shop will restore her to her former glory. Or, if I recall, you went and bought a new sports car?

Take all the time you need, John, but don’t wallow too long for the mechanic’s got to do his job to fix your car.

Dearly beloved

We are gathered here today

To get through this car wrecked by wife

Electric word wife

It means forever and that’s a mighty long time

But I’m here to tell you

There’s something else

In the auto body shop

A world of never ending happiness

You can always see your car fixed 7 days a week

So when you call up that mechanic in Milborough

You know the one – Mechanic on duty at Richard and Ted’s

Instead of asking him how much of your car is left

Ask him how much of your bank account, baby

’Cause with this wife

Things are much harder than in the auto body shop

With this wife

You’re on your own

Sorry, John, but it’s been at least a day by now. GET OVER IT. It’s just a thing, things can be replaced. At least it wasn’t a family member or a pet who died!

That’s more than a fender bender she totaled his car

haha, pretty funny. The over-the-top reactions are great, here, treating it like a literal funeral. I can’t imagine that car is fixable in that condition- do they even bother taking them to the body shops in that condition?

Leave them alone. It sounds silly, but John really needs his time to say good-bye.

That is a TOTALED car, not a repairable… leave him to say goodbye to his pile of parts…

That car is in the Expensive Care Unit and the prognosis is not looking good, better call the minister to say some last prayers and blessings for the soon to be de-parted!

Wow, the damage looks real bad to me!

Lynn’s Notes:

Richard and Ted’s was a real auto body shop near our home in Northern Ontario. It was fun to give the guys a nod in FBorFW…trouble was that I had only one original comic strip and two guys who wanted it!

I do not love a car like a person. Be thankful for the fact that your wife is safe.

One week after purchasing a 1964 Imperial convertible with low mileage I was struck by a 2 ton truck carrying a giant saguaro cactus. I know just how he feels!

I empathize. I dented the hatch and bumper on my brand new SUV and was gloomy for a couple of weeks.

It happened to me with my ’69 MGB/GT. I was devastated, but after repair and a $50 deductible, all was well again.

It’s strange; how we can be so enraged or saddened by what happens to an over priced, expensive to maintain, piece of machinery. Way back after getting my first job, I came out of a grocery store to find that somebody had put down, what must have been a heavy wooden box on the trunk of my new GYO and then slide it off leaving a bunch of deep scratches in the paint. I was so enraged that I probably would have physically attacked whoever did it if he had still been there.

I know just how John feels. My daughter TOTALED my new Corolla LX when a Cadillac came through an intersection at full tilt and she hit his rear quarter panel. The caddy roared away (hit & run) but the front of the Corolla crumpled and I had to borrow a crow bar from a fireman to get my personal stuff out of the glove box. Luckly, the air bag popped and my daughter was safe – she walked away from it. This is also when I found out about insurance NOT paying full price to replace the car!

Looks about the same as the damage caused by a deer strike!

Speaking from thirty plus years in the auto damage industry – one statement that always makes appraisers cringe is “This car is my baby.” I had a shop-owner friend who had a routine response for that. He’d look the car owner in the eye and say, “Then, you don’t need me. You need a pediatrician.”

Have never ever understood the love that people lavish on their cars. I have owned and enjoyed sports cars, a pick up, along with a couple of van conversions but now? working on SUV #4. Like being able to see other traffic rather than being buried and as a plus, really like the comfort on long trips

Really not having much sympathy for John here. When your wife tells you she had a car wreck, the first words out of your mouth should be, “Are you alright!?” John is disturbingly materialistic and shallow in this arc and it really puts me off following his story, or empathizing with his ‘loss’.

Maybe he will think twice before leaving a sports car with her again.

What would hit me, looking at this damage, is how close I came to losing my wife and my son, who were in the car when it was hit.

I feel for you, buddy.

He needs to grow up a little.

I could appreciate if the car was a family treasure, but seriously? If he and his dad spent years together restoring it in his youth and it had great sentimentality because of that, then I would understand.

Relax John, think about it as a Get Out of Jail Free card. Use it the next time Elly shouts at you.

I don’t recall John being concerned about Elly, just his car :(

Is Elly’s facial expression due to the nature of Richard/Ted’s question or the result of where his left hand seems to be located?