Kids in the back, dolts in the front......

[dreadedcandiru2]

As you know, the Pattersons seem incapable of coming up with a family vacation plan that pleases all of them; usually, it's the children that suffer the most from this lack of vision. We started out with Mike and Lizzie having a succession of crumby trips to tourist traps and devolved to John and Elly taking their creepy couples-only vacations that left April at home like an afterthought. They always used to tell April the same thing: they needed a break from parenting so they had to exclude her from seeing new things and new places. What they really meant is that their experiences traveling with children have always been negative so they don't want to be "those idiot tourists with the noisy, ill-behaved child"; what gets me upset is that each and every negative experience can be traced to their inability to understand how children think and thus make travel a positive experience. Usually, they act like the children's boredom with zooming down the highway for hours on end with little to occupy themselves is a great big burden; their failure to realize that the offsprings and short ones pick up on their bad attitudes and realize that Mommy and Daddy are mad at them for no reason they can see sabotages any attempt they might make to expose them to the novel and unfamiliar. The end result is the odd fixation the kids have with the Pattermanse; since the new is bad, the old is good.

Comments

[howtheduck.livejournal.com]

We started out with Mike and Lizzie having a succession of crumby trips to tourist traps and devolved to John and Elly taking their creepy couples-only vacations that left April at home like an afterthought.

I was always amazed at how little effort Lynn put into realizing that April existed, once she existed. Lynn was constantly putting in things from her real life where her kids were all out of the house into her strips where April was still in the house. The vacation stories leaving out April every time are the prime example.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

The only way that work in the real world is if both John and Elly had suffered the same sort of brain injury that Wally Winkerbean did; instead of forgetting faces, they continually need reminding that April exists.

[howtheduck.livejournal.com]

I can see For Better or For Worse if Lynn Johnston did a jump in time like Batiuk did for Funky Winkerbean instead of ending the modern strip. April would never reappear and no one would mention her. Likewise, little Francie. Grandpa Jim, on the other hand, would be recovering from stroke #12.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

I can see something else: Meredith, Robin, James and Anthony's "real" second child (the practice kid he had with that evil Frenchy woman not counting) would be well on their way to monogamous misery with the first white person of the opposite sex they'd met in pre-school.

[clio-1.livejournal.com]

Meredith + James 4EVAH!

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Yes!! That way, the bloodline can run true and they can give birth to the Perfect Man destined to rule over all.