Foobonia and Points West.

I think that it's something of a truism that what most irritates adults about the bog-standard adolescent is that your average teenybopper tends to clam the Hell up in the presence of adults he or she would prefer not to talk to lest he or she be accused by his or her peers of being a gutless wonder who goes crawling to Mommy with every little thing like a great big stupid sooky baby. Rather than remember their own past and realize that what they did to their folks is being done to them and thus stop panicking and screaming about doom, they act like their parents did and, well, act as if every grunted, monosyllabic answer heralded in an acpocalypse of hate.

This is why it's always amusing to watch Connie overreact shamelessly to that goof Dirk Dagger. Where most of us see an absurd goof who was hard-wired to believe the outlandish assumption that since he felt awkward and perscuted most of the time. his placid life in a flaccid suburb was actually Hell On Earth and laugh at him, Lynn's target audience actually do see a big girl's blouse as Satan. Five bucks says that he's wetting himself right now because his own kids don't do the big relate-o with him and the missus.

Now, to get back to people who don't speak to Lynn, let's remind ourselves that she said flat out that she tried and tried because she could never get Christopher Nichols to tell his story. She wanted to get to know him but he never said a word so he had to go away. The problem is that what Chris might have to say is something Lynn might not exactly want to hear. Y'see, someone has to say something she fels like hearing in order for her to listen and Chris, he doesn't make the grade.

This is because he might tend to say troubling things that might give people the wrong idea about what goes on at the Pattermanse. The first such thing would have to be "Mike's mom doesn't like having him or Lizzie inside very much an'she gets real angry if he comes inside before it gets dark out. One time, Mommy an'Daddy were talkin'when I wasn't s'pposed t'hear'em an'he said that she didn't want kids, she wanted little dummies she could put in a glass box when she was done playin'with them." The implication that Elly is a fragile idiot who can't coexist with children who inspire anger and hatred within her heart is not consistent with her self-image so is just gibberish Lynn can't hear.

The second disturbing thing is probably "Mike Patterson might think that he's some great big important guy who can't be seen with us or his sister but most of us kids think he's this real big loser who can be talked into doin'stupid stuff 'cause he's too dumb to come in outta the rain." Now, Lynn might secretly believe this and tends to imply that Mike's need to get in good with the guys makes his life worse but to actively say so out loud is cruel and wrong.

So is "We like having Mike as a baby-sitter because it's funny when he goes all to pieces when we get rowdy. Dad says it's like havin'a small version of his mom over because she's fragile too. Funny. I thought it was just stuff that was fragile. I didn't know people were fragile but Dad says Mrs Patterson is. It sure is bad to be Lizzie, though. She's told not to stand up for herself because her parents want a kewpie doll instead of a kid (Mom AND Dad say that) and she's 'bout the only person Mike can push around an'get away with it because his dad 'cowers behind his paper' and his mom's got her head lost in some place called the Twilight Zone and they just let him do stuff." You can readily see that he has nothing to say to Lynn when he says something like that. The very idea of calling John and Elly absentee parents who let chaos happen because they're asleep at the switch is just gibberish Lynn can't take seriously

The odd thing about the upcoming Halloween dance is not that it was going to be the last time Deanna Sobinski appeared for about eleven years. The very odd thing is that otherwise forgotten character Darryl Smythe was still around a year or so after she left. The reason that I mention this is that the boy seems to be something of a cipher who Lynn seems to have created to make it look as if Mike had a social circle. While it's fairly likely that she simply forgot the blond boy with the freckles, there seems to be an explanation ready-made for the occasion. As we see here, it seems to have been school policy to try to break up cliques such as the one Mike and his friends had. The pessimistic view would be that The Man was trying to split up friends out of spite while the more generous view was to encourage children to expand their social horizons. In any event, it would appear that the person putting butts in seats made sure that a five-boy group turned into a four-boy band owing to the masterstroke of assigning Darryl to a different classroom. Since Mike is sort of stupid, he sort of forgot about the boy and is probably currently staring at an old snapshot asking Deanna if she recognizes this odd stranger that shows up from time to time.