Foobonia and Points West.

This tendency of Lynn to recycle rejected plotlines isn't the only instance in which the Lost Strips can be seen to predict the future. While it's true that the sequences that I'm about to discuss were reasonably harmless back in the late Seventies and early Eighties, they tend to be off-putting in the hear and now because of all that's happened afterward. The first such lost sequence concerns first grader Michael's big, sloppy embarrassing crush on Deanna. Back in 1979, what we saw is a small, scruffy boy developing a crush on a classmate who saw him as something of an irritant. While it's true that most parents would look at his flat-footed attempts to impress the girl and make a cute little aside about how funny it would be if they were to eventually marry, most sane people would think that that was at best, a very long shot. If they found out that the two of them actually did get married, said average, normal healthy person would describe that is a very odd little coincidence. The problem is that Lynn ain't most people. If questioned, she'd probably chuckle that they were indeed destined to be married all along. What's more, most of her fans would join in being impressed at how romantic this all is.

The second set of rejected strips that predicted the Pattersons' present day started off when Elly got a letter from Marian telling her that her grandfather had passed on. The first rough-draft goes as follows:

Panel 1: Elly holds a letter in her hands and says "Oh, dear, John! My grandfather has just passed away! What an awful shock for my mother!"
Panel 2: John 'comforts' Elly by reminding her that the man was ninety-three, that they've been expecting this and that her mother will by okay.
Panel 3: He then says that the man wanted to go before saying that her mother will be relieved now that her life has been made so much easier.
Panel 4: She agrees with this but then says that Marian now feels as if she a fifty-five year old orphan.

While the second goes like this:

Panel 1: Elly tells John that it's easy not to talk about it but wonders what will happen when their parents are elderly and need care.
Panel 2: John mutters something about they owe them so much and need to repay all they were given but can't see living with the parents.
Panel 3: Elly tells him that Jim and Marian will never move in with them but she herself can't bring herself to park them in an old age home.
Panel 4: John ends the discussion by agreeing that it's an awful decision that they don't have to think of yet so should stop talking about it.

The interesting thing about all of this is that John's jerkish remark about how happy Marian will be now that she's no longer looking after a very old man not only demonstrates that he's a heartless dick who can only think of things in terms of what's convenient, it seems to me to foreshadow the way Eva Warzone, the Continental and Luis Refugee deal with April's grief over what happened to Jim. The underlying idea that since Jim and Elly's grandfather were very old, the best thing to do is be grateful that their suffering is at an end so that one can move on to things that actually matter. In John's case, it's not having to worry about the future; in the case of Eva Warzone, it's crushing Becky before she can crush them.

This leads me to another thing wherein making John and Elly's life easier comes into play: his comment about how he and Elly are somehow beholden to their parents for something that they don't actually seem to want to be rewarded for doing. I do not know where these two came up with the idea that parents should somehow or other present their children with an itemized bill for services rendered when they leave home because their folks sure don't believe that they're owed anything more than happy children. What I do know is that for some reason, the two of them think that they have to own horses because of that favor bank system of morality they believe in.

This, I think, is why Jim was very reluctant to move to the Pattermanse. He didn't want to impose because his children had their own lives. He stayed a couple of years so as to make Elly happy and to get his bearings after Marian passed but soon found himself wanting a private life again with Iris. The problem is that by the time that Elly's horrible cooking gave him a minor stroke, their refusal to plan for that sort of thing left them scrambling around like lunatics and treating April like someone who has mittens pinned to her jacket sleeves in July. What it also tells us is that when he actually did pass on, April will have been  accused of wanting to make his death about her and her drama by inquiring as to why the assembled hypocritical vermin come to whine about how much they'll miss a man they shunned like a leper because they feared his aphasia was contagious didn't do more for him when he was still alive.

Now, I’d say it was pretty safe to say that Deanna clearly sees herself as being a better mother to Meredith and Robin than Mira ever was to her. Strip after endless strip is, after all, predicated on the notion that Deanna has to defend the new, better way of being a mother from the evil criticism of the domineering monster mother who used her evil family politics to dominate HER DADDY!!!!!! and make Deanna’s life a misery. There is a problem, however, with the time-not-presents orthodoxy that The Sainted Elly preaches: it doesn’t work out so good because neither she nor Deanna seem to be willing to spend any time with their children. What generally happens is that the two dimwits stand there scared out of their tiny, tiny minds because children evilly refuse to do what they’re supposed to: sit quietly where ever it is that Mommy plops them down and not do anything or think anything or want any sort of mental stimulation. I can readily see Deanna shrieking that she cannot be asked to give her children attention either. Simply put, Deanna is a worse parent to her children than Mira was to her. All Mira wanted was a tacky wedding without that gay guy angering God by stinking up the joint and a son-in-law who isn’t a sponge-headed man-child. What Deanna clearly wants is to have the evil, scary, baffling tendency of children to move around, speak and think on their own initiative to go away so that they can become mindless drones who only move when she wills it.

This desire, this longing to abolish the free will of her children seems to be why she idolizes another pair of failures who think themselves superior to their better antecedents. Granted, Jim and Marian did do something wrong by giving the world a petty, manipulative and tyrannical imbecile woman and her yawping man-child of a kid brother and somehow, Will and Carrie messed up big-time by blighting the world with a grinning gargoyle with a train fetish but they’re clearly better parents and people than their children. April, as a for instance, pretty much owes her life to Jim’s presence in it and it shows. One could say that Jim saw her as a way of raising Elly properly. It’s kind of too bad that the old boy popped his clogs before he could crow about how his way is better but you can’t have everything, right? 

One of the things he wasn't allowed to have was a daughter who actually believed that he and Marian did a good job. Oh, they tried their best but they were hampered by a double standard and thus made her life a misery. This means that Elly sees herself as trying to raise her children the way Marian could have raised her had she not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. She thus differs from Deanna who wants to raise her children the way Mira should have raised her had she not been sick with the impulse to interfere.

I think it's fairly safe to say that Deanna is as averse to confronting people over matters of substance as anyone born a Patterson; no matter what indignity she might suffer, standing up for herself or her friends is more trouble than it's worth. This was especially noticeable during the big sham wedding; instead of simply explaining to Mira that if she didn't like Mike's friend Lawrence, she couldn't be part of her life anymore. Instead, she tried her damnedest to make the argument go away. As she would later on, all she ended up doing was impotently whining about how her mother wouldn't settle down and stop interfering. The odd thing about the dynamic between Mira and Deanna is why Deanna made such a point of wanting to keep Mira in her life despite so obviously despising her and regarding her as a domineering, selfish and petty obstruction. No matter what the stimulus, care was taken to make sure that Mira didn't simply wash her hands of her and let her do whatever she wanted. It's not just Deanna's need to not be confrontational when it actually matters that explains it; my guess is that she needs to have her arch-enemy mother hanging around to blame for all her troubles. If Mira's "bad" influence wasn't there, Dee might just have to accept personal responsibility for her problems and she just can't do that.

As we all know, Elly immediately remembered who Deanna Sobinski was when she read the article about her car accident. This touched off Mike's pursuit of her, his amazingly brazen proposal, the Big Fat Fake Wedding and everything else. This is also where things started to get really impossible. After all, she and Mike were casual-at-best acquaintances back in elementary school. They didn't run in the same circles, have the same interests and, unless I'm mistaken, the Pattersons only had the vaguest idea of who she was. This makes Elly's remembrance of her a minor miracle. For her to perform the same feat if she left town before grade school even started is quite simply an impossibility unless she started compiling a list of potential spouses when Mike was in diapers. She doesn't impress me as having that much time to waste; sheets have to be shaved and bathroom floors scrubbed with toothbrushes, after all.

One of the most annoying things about the new interpretation of the first encounters between Deanna and Mike is that she acts far too mature for her age. This is, of course, because Lynn wants her and Mike's behavior to make sense to her. If that means that they act like no first grader who ever lived, that's just how it's gotta be as far as she's concerned. A child that tiny given a contemporary bedroom eyes is bad enough; what makes it worse is the suggestion that she'd like to see him rough people up to prove how manly he is. This, sadly, is a trait that a another female character demonstrated, I'm talking, of course, about Elizabeth. Watching Anthony give Howard the purple nurple impressed Liz so much, she didn't call him out on all the crap he pulled afterward. This is an alarming trait as far as I'm concerned; it may look all cute to see someone demurely titter while idiots beat the holy Hell out of each other over her but in real life that's kind of not all the charming. It suggests, at least to me, a fairly-well developed love of aggression that has no moral component to keep it in check.

Now that it looks as if Deanna is indeed amongst us, it's time to remember how she and Mike interacted back when they first met. AS I said before, the best way to describe their relationship was "Irritant Boy and the Huffy Printheth." This is because Mike couldn't quite figure out how to handle his attraction to the girl with pigtails and a lisp. He wanted to be what he thought a normal little boy was and keep girliness out his life but something about her put a goofy grin on his face for reasons he didn't want explained. He thus resorted, like so many boys before and after him, by trying to get her attention by antagonizing her. The annoying stunts he pulled had the predictable result: an easily-offended little girl storming away from him filled with anger and the desire to get an authority figure to crush the thorn in her side. The occasions that she showed she was wise to his having a crush on her were few and far between because she was too busy being angry because he was being a normal human male. She didn't start smiling at his antics until she had her hooks into him; after she became "yes, Dear", he could be as big an idiot as he liked and she'd cheer his varletry.