For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 22, 2021

now that’s an interesting bargain

Elly, you’re supposed to remove the tray before picking up April. Did you just yank her out by squeezing her through the opening? Did you even secure her with the leg/waist straps? How did Mike and Liz survive their childhoods??

Mike, you get what you get and you’ll get it when you get it. That’s that!

Good one, Mike!!

“Here’s your sign! " (With thanks to Bill Engvall)

If you are going to buy a car, make it a practical one, in other words, no car that Michael wants to drive!

I recall a good friend of mine got a brand-new car fresh off the line right after we all turned 16. She got into no less than 4 accidents that first year, mostly all fender benders but one serious one too. In the meantime, my parents refused to buy me a car and I didn’t have a job so they would let me use our old minivan. Since it wasn’t mine, I was super careful with it and never got into an accident. I was in my 20’s before I was able to buy my first car. I’m in my 40s and have never been in an accident (though some guy did back into me in a parking lot, but it wasn’t my fault).

For a writer he sucks at persuasive speeches. I guess he is not a comedian.

Better watch it Michael ,your moms liable to send you away for good on your uncles farm!!!

Now I remember this one…I think this is the one.

Michael’s argument is going to make Ellie decide to have the old heap fixed instead. Sorry Mike, no new car for you. :P

I was never big on driving and still ain’t. Anyway I was 16 and working and I get home from school and my parents told me I was going to get my license. I didn’t care one way or the other. I got the old car which was fine, a Rambler Classic. It was an automatic with buttons to start and shift. It could get to 75MPH which worked for me. My only accident was I opened the passenger door for a friend who was walking out of school and the girl next to me backed up and took the door almost off!! This was just before Christmas, LOL! The worst part is I never used a key to start, I would just turn it and push the button. When I got a real car I kept turning it too long and grinding the starter.

My younger brother, Larry, was the third of us to drive my mother’s 1964 Dodge Coronet (a former NYC taxi). Half a mile from home he got onto the Nimitz freeway at night. He was still in the right lane when (according to witnesses) a car traveling 80 mph in the right lane had barely turned on its blinker when it smashed into the back of Larry’s car. The impact broke the front bench seat out, rippled the roof, and sent the car across the freeway to bounce of the cyclone fence and end up in the emergency parking. One minute on his new license, and kaboom!

Mercy, you people know this is a comic strip right? You can’t draw everything and waste the panel space. Plus, you are addressing an imaginary character… just enjoy the strip and stop viewing it through the lens of realism.

Perhaps a decent used car? The dents are already paid for.

You do not owe Michael a car. Let him work hard to raise the money for one of his own AND the $$$$ insurance

I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 18, due to my mother deciding I needed bunion surgery in my 15th summer, hip surgery in my 16th (I had hip dysplasia and it was beginning to cause problems), and in my 17th summer, I had a breast reduction and shoulder surgery. But my dad gave me our ‘78 Blazer when I turned 18 and I loved that thing. Unfortunately, it had a U-joint problem so my parents bought me an ’83 Chevette with no air-conditioning, power steering, or power brakes for graduation 3 months later. It was only 2 years old so it didn’t have too many problems, but I hated it all the same. But, when my kids started driving, I wished I still had that car. It was indestructible, couldn’t go faster than 60 or so, and cheap to repair.

Don’t ever take a new car to a WALMART parking lot. It won’t be so new looking when you come back to your car after shopping.

When my daughter was born 54 years ago I held her on the one hour ride home from the hospital. Pretty standard back then. She still screamed the entire way home and in every car trip until she was 3 1/2. At 13 months she screamed the entire time we were in the air on the flight from Frankfurt to New Jersey. I walked the Atlantic trying to keep her comfortable. She slept the hour we were on the ground in Gander Newfoundland to refuel.

When my son turned 16 we gave him the ‘81 Datsun we’d inherited a few years earlier from grandpa. Served him well all the way through college graduation in ‘04. He said it guaranteed any one he dated saw him for his real self and not through the lens of his “stuff.”

The last drive alone test, make the kid change a tire correctly. It usually requires all four wheels.

new driver in a new car = high insurance premiums

This teen driving thing, makes me nervous. I have a grandson with the attention span of a gnat, that is the right age to be on the road. I feel some new gray hairs growing…

Someone may change her mind about getting a new car. “Maybe we should repair my car and wait until Michael moves out before buying a new one.”

NOT……helping your case, ‘Michael’ ! ! Not at all ! ! ! !

The kid gets the wreck

I love today’s punchline…

John will never let Michael drive his expensive sports car and Elly will never let Michael drive her new car. It looks like Michael is not going to be driving any time soon.

On the other hand, it appears the author has retconned Gordon’s age. When he first appeared, he was in a grade level above Michael and Lawrence.

Oh Mike is that what you are wanting to bang up a car, there goes the auto insurance.

A friend stayed with her old Volvo because it had no radio – neither her kids nor their friends wanted to go in it!

give or sell the boy the old car. let him learn to fix and maintain.

Sometimes I think the only reason some people even read this strip is to find flaws and point them out. Sheesh!

Mike, you can’t guarantee you can keep that promise. If you don’t know why, you need to learn the meaning of the word “accident.”

She doesn’t even want you driving a car. PERIOD!

Golden Oldie:

Sign at the Auto Body Shop:

May We Have the Next Dents?

I guess that’s why they call them acci-dents.

When I bought my very first new car (an ’87 Buick Skyhawk Sporthatch, midnight blue metal-flake, with headlight doors and a black louvered hatch cover…mmmsexy) my youngest sister, 16 and about to get her license, was SO excited to drive it…until I informed her that no one under 20 would be driving my new hotness. She started to whine and I raised it to 21. She shut up. I stuck by it, too! I did, however, drive her anywhere she needed to go…so she got plenty of shotgun time. (But I picked the radio station! ;D )

What’s all the fuss about insurance? This is Canada, remember. Land of single-payer!

Boyish temperament kicks in at this age. Better that he learns with the old car and then handle the new.