On not doing chores and guidance counselors.

[dreadedcandiru2]

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind us all of a device that a lot of comic strip authors love to use: the lazy child who won't clean up after him- or herself. It would probably be easier to list the number of children who do pick up after themselves than it would the crowds who do not. The reason that this is such a common device is that it allows the author to express their frustration with a target they find acceptable: the soft, coddled, entitled and defiant North American teenager. The reason that Luann is such a creature is not, as Evans might think, because she's inherently lazy. The reason is hidden in her declaration that she cannot see herself as becoming like the bland, officious, dreary time-server she calls a guidance counselor. This, along with her breezy statement that Miss Phelps was born a forty-something killjoy, is a lie. Deep down, Luann can see herself mutating into that and it scares her; since she's fairly young and sheltered, she can't see past surface impressions or through defense mechanisms so doesn't know that a person she's blithely dismissing as a humorless drudge who was born old might be quite a different person outside the artificial environment of a North American high school. For instance, the woman has in Mr Fogarty her own personal Aaron Hill; Luann might not get it but then she probably doesn't quite get that the man wasn't always bald and tweedy. Instead, she tells herself horror stories about jettisoning all the parts of herself that might make her appealing to boys and chanting slogans at the children of 2040.