For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for June 22, 2022

Don’t complain, enjoy it while you can!

maybe you can find a summer job? work in the same grocery store as Michael perhaps; be a bagger or a customer service rep

Get a job

Learned long before her age to never complain to a parent about being bored or having nothing to do. After age 7 it was never “Go play outside for awhile, it will do you good”. It was always “well this needs to be done” or “that needs to be done” and there was always the “go cleanup your room”.

Summer vacations in a school year started around 1900. Before that, breaks in the school year occurred due to weather or harvest time. Summer vacation has been around for 122 years now, so long that we take it for granted that children have a summer vacation. And yet, in all those 122 years, no schoolchild on the first day of summer vacation ever said to their mother, “Mom…I don’t have anything to do.” History is made.

Looks likek a good time to learn to cook, help mom out.

Yeah. All that lounging around gets old really quickly. I’m surprised you’re not over at Dawn’s, Liz.

Doesn’t she have like a schoolgirl girlfriend clique to hang together with? I seem to remember one of their names was Dawn.

Farley really looks contented with nothing to do.

Wrong thing to say Elizabeth….

That adventure didn’t last too long.

Like retirement sometimes.

Mow the lawn, wash the cars, brush the dog, take April to the park, vacuum the carpets, wash the windows, get a summer job…. The list goes on..

isn’t that a good thing though… oh, who am I kidding, pestered my mom and dad too. :)

Teach her to cook. Help clean the house. Shovel dog poop. We raised our kids right!

Finding something to do during Summer vacation was never a problem for me. One summer, while 8 or so, I drew pictures of the neighborhood using the perspective technique I’d learned in school. Another time I learned drafting from Mr Lynch who lived down the street. And, another year, I built a race car from plaster paris and a storm detection device with a homemade oscilloscope. The latter didn’t work.

Time to find a summer job! Or volunteer someplace.

When I was her age, I already knew that complaining about not having anything to do was a very bad idea.

It’s amazing how fast a vacation can go from blissful idleness to a project to build a gazebo so I can enjoy shade and mosquito screen while I’m idle outside.

Somebody left their bloomers on top of the curtains.

I NEVER had that problem! There was always plenty of fun stuff to do. Now that I am retired, I still never have that problem.

It is what it is?

I learned very early on never to say to one of my parents or grandparents that I had nothing to do. They could find something for me to do in a nano-second!

Are there no video games? Are there no Internets?

In my day, I was happy to have nothing to do. I never complained that “there’s nothing to do.” I was glad of it!

Farley’s short haircut is already a thing of the past.

No bicycle?

You will now.

Yeah. Leisure time can lead to boredom depressingly quickly.

I have plenty to do – just nothing I FEEL LIKE doing!

…said no kid ever… but it’s a good set up for a joke.

In our family, anyway, I never, ever heard my kids say that they had nothing to do. In fact they were always “busy”, or busy, depending on what was asked of them to do next.

Is this the story line where Elizabeth learns how to shave the sheets?

Find a job!! I hope to find one this summer

That’s how I feel on very hot days.

Help her mother.