On not answering questions.

The interesting thing about last Friday's reprint isn't that Mike acted like someone who was pining away for a lover who'd jilted him but that the punchline depended on his echoing a rather unhelpful comment Elly made. A normal person would have given Michael the definite answer "No, Lawrence isn't coming back so sponge it up and move on with your life because you're creeping me out acting like life is on hold, you dozy twit." Elly, never one to pick her battles, did the opposite by enabling Michael's need to not move on as well as giving him license to keep on thinking that there's some way to will Lawrence back home. The reason, I should think, is akin to why I believe that she didn't secure that lock ever: she never gives children definite answers when she's supposed to because questions and answers are bad because answering questions puts her on the spot. If she gives the kids answers to questions she doesn't know the answer to, she might do something dangerous and reveal that she's as lost and confused as everyone else and also might end up being the bad guy so it's best to evade the whole thing when it counts. She does this by burying the non-answer under a mountain of airy nonsense, aiding and abetting her twee imbecile of a mother in thinking that small children's brains aren't big enough to hold real answers or, in the most disgusting example of ducking a question that had almost disastrous consequences for an innocent that she still will not acknowledge, flat out lying to them.

Of course, the flip-side to that is that when it doesn't matter worth a damn, she's really quick to dish out definitive answers that can't be questioned ever because she also doesn't want to look weak. Oh, sure, she laments 'having' to drop the hammer on good kids after the fact but she never seems to want to admit that she should pick her battles and be firm when firmness is actually called for. Then again, we are dealing with a woman who clearly seems to see the house as being dirtier than it could possibly get so sane thinking isn't in her wheelhouse.