The real meaning of Autumn......

[dreadedcandiru2]

As you all know, Lynn Johnston is for reasons that make sense only to her averse to reminding or even informing her American readership that Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving Day on the second Monday in October; I'm not sure if it's because she fears an angry backlash from misguided people who think the late November day that they celebrate is divinely mandated, correction from people who don't realize that different nations have different holidays, a sense of inferiority or a distaste for the day itself as being too much work for not enough of a reason. What I do know is that for some reason, Lynn thinks of Autumn itself as being a sort of Holiday in its own right with its ritual of Elly and John holding out a rake so as to stop their children from having too active a social life. Given that raking leaves and whining about children who exploit the alleged generosity of their parents can extend to cover the period in between whining about back to school and complaining about how greedy and selfish the offsprings are, it seems to me that she's covering both days here in a two-and-a-half month long sulk about how bad Elly has it because their children want to enjoy their childhood when she 'wasn't allowed' to. I also think that Jim and Marian's randomly spaced comments on how Elly went out of her way to be a sourpuss out of sheer bloody-mindedness is why they both had to be removed from play. It's one thing for Vern to make a throw-away gag about John's fifteen minute rebellious streak and quite another to have steadier reminders that Elly was far more difficult to raise than Mike, Liz and April would have been in the hands of a competent parent.