For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for March 02, 2019

“So! How was the dance?” Really Elly? When you honked the horn yesterday Michael was standing outside hand-in-hand with Martha, and this is the question you ask? How about “So! Who was that girl you were holding hands with?” That’s the question I would ask my son in that situation. Don’t dance around it with generic questions. Get right to it. Ask him directly.

because they’re teenagers.

Because the less we tell the more that happens.

Elly has apparently contracted that mental ailment which erases all memory of what it was like to be a teenager.

Just think back to your own teen days, Elle. Then all will become clear.

Mostly because if parents knew everything that happened they would have a fit. If not going off on their own kids, then going off on the other kids.

How many questions do you need to ask, Elly? They were at a dance, not first-hand witnesses to President Kennedy’s assassination.

Never ask how it went. If you can remain completely silent, they’ll start talking in the back seat and you’ll find out a great deal. The more excited they are, the more they’ll forget who the driver is and the more they’ll talk.

I don’t see Martha anywhere. She must have been dropped off first.

I think you answered your own question Lynn!

U go momma

Gordon wants so bad to say, “Smell my jacket. Girl vomit. Really.”

Lynn’s Notes: No notes for today.

You really don’t want to know!

Back in the days before DL ( drivers license ) when Dad played chauffeur to a bunch of teenage boys- Mom never had a license (Thank God!) – he never gave us the “3rd Degree”. His usual question was: " You guys want to stop at Friendly’s for ice cream or a burger ?"

Funny, in his way, he got more information out of us without asking, than all the interrogations my mother would put me through. My buddies and I would tell him everything – knowing that whatever we said was between my Dad and us.

He was even cool about driving me with a date to a dance, or the movies but I must say that getting my driver’s license couldn’t come fast enough, for me.

Even after I’d gone away to school, and later in the Army, when I came home, there were many nights Dad and I would head to Friendly’s for ice cream and a chat.

If you are driving kids, you need to keep your mouth shut and your ears open.

Someone once said that your school-bus driver knows more about your kids than you do!

The best part of the drawing in Panel 2 is where Lynn Johnston apparently decided to put a Rorschach Test ink blot on the top of Gordon’s hat. I don’t think we have seen the top of Gordon’s hat before. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you see the top of Gordon’s hat?

I had to go back and reread the strip. I don’t see what Elly said that’s got everybody so worked up about. That was not a 3rd degree.

Has anybody else noticed that in the last two strips, Gordon is back with Michael after taking Allyson home in a taxi?

Most parents will not try too hard to grill their kids with their kids’ friends around. There is a whole procedure after, when the parent tries both direct and indirect questioning, and also perhaps spying, to clear up any questions.

My parents never once asked me about school dances or parties or anything about school. They were too busy with their own interests. Of course, if I upset them somehow they would let me know in a very physical way. I tried to do the opposite with my children. Letting them know I was interested in what they were doing and that they could tell me anything at all without fear of my reaction.