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Remember a few months ago when I talked about how pissed off Liz was that Dawn took up with Shawna Marie during her stay at Exile Farm? The idea seems to have been that Dawn should have done absolutely nothing with her life while Lizzie was away so that she would find things to be exactly the same as they were when Elly and John lost their shit and packed her off to Bev and Danny's place. It's like how Mike turned into a whiny little bitch because Jason Finkbeiner was THERE for Martha; in both cases, people are simply expected to sit on their hands and do nothing because the Patterson children expect to be sent away and not have to cope with people living their lives without them in it.
I think that that is a very stupid and self-centered thing to expect. Not only does it assume that Mike and Liz are the axis around which the world rotates, the other idiotic underlying assumption is that the people in the Pattersons' neighborhood aren't used to the idea that Mike and Liz will not be allowed to have a summer at home just hanging out like other children. Either they go on a family trip to hang out with old people who lecture them or John and Elly send them away because they're too fragile to deal with the idea of children being underfoot all summer long. If you were to ask Dawn or Gordon or Lawrence about this, he or she would shrug and say "Well, that's what happens. Mike and Liz and their sister, they just go away for the summer and that's that." If you were to ask a stupid person like Connie, you'd get a huffy comment about Elly being tormented. If you were to ask someone who doesn't think much of Elly's parenting skills like Annie, you'd be told Elly doesn't like being a mother so tends to send them away. This makes Annie better than the other people I'd mentioned.
I think that that is a very stupid and self-centered thing to expect. Not only does it assume that Mike and Liz are the axis around which the world rotates, the other idiotic underlying assumption is that the people in the Pattersons' neighborhood aren't used to the idea that Mike and Liz will not be allowed to have a summer at home just hanging out like other children. Either they go on a family trip to hang out with old people who lecture them or John and Elly send them away because they're too fragile to deal with the idea of children being underfoot all summer long. If you were to ask Dawn or Gordon or Lawrence about this, he or she would shrug and say "Well, that's what happens. Mike and Liz and their sister, they just go away for the summer and that's that." If you were to ask a stupid person like Connie, you'd get a huffy comment about Elly being tormented. If you were to ask someone who doesn't think much of Elly's parenting skills like Annie, you'd be told Elly doesn't like being a mother so tends to send them away. This makes Annie better than the other people I'd mentioned.
