For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for December 24, 2024

Great analogy!

She’s going into business with her dad — an’ you’re a writer.

A nice way of saying: Rhetta is going to make money. Mike is going to be dependent on his parents for the rest of his life unless he marries really well.

She plans to stay here for the rest of her life — and who knows where your career will take you.

A nice way of saying: There’s no way you are going to make a living as a writer in Milborough. You will have to move someplace where they actually hire writers.

SPOILER this part: This dialogue is dripping with irony considering what the future brings for Mike.

You met on the highway of life … but you were traveling in different directions.

A nice way of saying: I know you don’t understand a single word of the examples we gave in the first two panels so instead let me give you a metaphor you can easily torture.

For all their youth, Gordon and Tracey show amazing maturity and wisdom—more than Mike’s parents, sometimes.

Rhetta’s problem is that she’s TOO attached to her family. I doubt that she’ll ever be able to break away from them.

I remember THAT feeling. It was about 54 years ago.

Been there, got splatted. Yeah, it was the best thing that ever happened to me — I got a winner!

GOOD ONE!!

I, do like Michael without all the ‘extra’ hair on his face ! ! !

Mike, when you recognize that’s it’s best not to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with you, the road to recovery becomes a lot easier.

TRACEY CAN SPEAK!!

It stings, of course, but it is part of life for most people. Sometimes you’re the bug and sometimes you’re the windshield.

Wallow in your misery for a while, then move on. You never know what’s waiting around the bend.

Splat!

Or Michael was the car and Rhetta was the skunk.

You can never totally get rid of the smell just like you never toally forget a past early love. You just move on.

Poor guy is really having a hard time with it…

No matter how well you analyze, this stings. For some of us, it stings for a very long time.

Actually,Mike’s career didn’t take him very far—-he climbed a local ladder to success—-save one comical trip to Japan

LOL…. Yes, Michael does have a literary flair in his speech.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

And she has found the windshield squeegee at the gas station and used it.

Poor Mike. I guess he just thought she would stay in suspended animation until he decided that it was time to wake her up. /s It would be nice if, in the next few strips, he actually stops thinking of himself and how she “dumped” him and realize how selfish he has been — he has off pursuing his dreams and expected her to just stay the same and be there whenever he turns up. She at least recognizes that they have both changed and no longer want the same life and she is nice enough to try to say it in person instead of via text.

She wasn’t good enough for you, Michael.

What a nice conversational topic to make someone merry on Christmas Eve.

To be honest this story line originally was published the day after Christmas. When people are picking up all their ruined wrapping paper off the floor and tossing it in the garbage. You are more in the mood for resuming troubles and hardship.

But he has some good friends there. And a good family.

Like Gordo said: “You’re a writer!”

Dire Straits lyric: Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.

Time can be a glorious healer.

Mike … May you have smooth sailing, with fair winds and following seas.

Yeesh. Gord and Tracy are giving him excellent advice here, and he’s so determined to wallow in misery that he’s revising what should be sweet memories so that he retroactively comes off as the victim. How self-absorbed can you get?

That makes it seem Mike has a low opinion of himself. They simply came to a fork in the road and he took one way and she another.

Welcome to the club Kid, we get jackets ! :-D

Well, I found, whatever doesn’t kill you, can still knock the crap outta you.

Michael now has to face his first Christmas being both without a girlfriend and without Farley.

However, Rhetta did make John go BOING!!