For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for February 16, 2015

Uh… that’s quite neighborly I guess.

oh yeah, that’s familiar… did that with the coleman kids way back when

We had a Mother like that in our neighborhood while I was in the early years of grade school.

For me, it’s more about the behavior of the kids that come over. I’d rather have 10 kids that are nice, polite and play well with others (including no complaining about the food we have), than 1 kid who whines about everything, starts arguments and is selfish.

When my brother and I were small, our back yard in the summer was a congregating place. We had a small kiddie pool for wading, my mother made juice and popsicles, and all the mother knew where the kids were. On the weekends, my father would make dollhouses for the girls out of cardboard boxes and my mother would provide scraps of material for curtains.

Unlike adults kids don’t have common sense. There are things you are not suppose to repeat. It’s to stay within the family.

@Rebel Strike: “Orientals…” ??!! How about seeing people, not stereotypes?

The little darlings…

said: “She lives in America now.”North America. Canada, to be specific.

I don’t care where children are from, children are children with different personalities. You have quiet ones and noisy one’s and all need love.

Happy President’s Day!

On the one hand, I feel for Ellie. On the other, a house is not a home unless it’s full of kiddie litter.

I find these remarks about the Japanese and their insular culture insulting and a holdover from world war II when they were the enemy. Lighten up guys. The Enjos are not “from” Japan, they are of Japanese ancestry. I was unable to access the FBoFW archives today, so I couldn’t find specific dates, but this fact was made clear at some point.

Enough with the xenophobic comments. Wonder how well you’d do fitting in with another country’s habits.

Some people might not know how to get the ‘bold’ feature to work…

I have been stationed in Misawa. I loved seeing a new country and being in a place very different from where I grew up. Although I must admit, being in Japan I saw some things I did not care for (just like there are plenty of things in America and other places I do not care for). One reason for the “purity observation” is that it is based in fact. Japan is the most homogenous country in the world. 96% of its citizens are born to a family where both parents are Japanese.

USN1977: Native how far back? If you can still find Ainu, ask them.

I must admit that comments like some of the above point out how homogeneous neighborhoods must be in the US, since people really do not know how an American of a race which isn’t white might behave..In Canada, on the other hand, every neighborhood, no matter whether rich, poor or middle class, is always mixed race and everybody, but everybody knows each other’s business...What Lynn drew in today’s strip, isn’t the fact that the children were of a different race, she drew a neighbor’s children, if they are of different race than her family, is of no consequence at all, and it isn’t a comment on how that particular race behaves. Even her notes refer to her own mother’s sayings.

The mothers on the street where I lived tried to make my mother the baby-sitter for all. When she resisted, she was told “you’ll be very sorry.” My mother told them all off and never talked to several of them again. Didn’t make life easy for me growing up, but she was right.

howtheduck: Offensive, like everything else, is relative. In the US, one was imprisoned behind barbed wire and machine gun towers if your grandparents came from Japan – even if you and your parents were native-born. You had a few days to sell your house, farm, store, whatever and generally got ten cents on the dollar. They tried it in Hawaii, but discovered the Territorial economy would collapse, so only imprisoned those who had studied in Japan. Conficated property was never returned and reparations denied until after much of that generation had died.

Canada held out despite US pressure, until the shelling of Estavan lighthouse. Canadians of Japanese ancestry were moved east of the Coastal Range – initially to the Okanagan fruit-growing vacation land but then anywhere in the country not on the west coast. (Dave Suzuki’s family moved to Toronto, where he went to university.) Property was made Crown Property, and returned after the war.

Of course, Germany was also an enemy. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe was the grandson of a German immigrant, and the equivalent in the Pacific Theater was too. And you will still find those who claim it wasn’t racial.

Duck, it isn’t the portrayal of the Enjos in Lynn’s strips that I object to. It’s the insulting, obviously prejudiced comments here in this forum.