For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for May 02, 2023

Mud doesn’t count…

They say that all kids have to eat a pound of dirt…maybe not all at once, though.

One of the recurring themes of this comic strip is that the Patterson kids love their dirt. Of course, with Elly’s cooking as the other option, I can see their point.

April unsupervised, yet again. Shocking.

Is that the same doll whose head Mike used as a badminton bird a couple of weeks ago??

If so, she healed mighty fast.

And I love how intently she’s watching April prepare “supper”.

I used to “bake” my mud pies, underneath the dryer vent. I was probably about three, like April.

My Mom said that too, and yet we were/are MUCH healthier than this pampered, over-protected generation.

She’s doing a lot by that faucet. Maybe somebody should be watching her.

LOL… We are all star dust, and that includes dirt / mud.

Hey, I remember being young and my dad telling me, “There’s nothing wrong with good clean dirt”. Usually, when he wanted me to dig some worms.

On a much lighter note, I am surprised that at her age, April, is able (in all ways) to operate the outside faucet—most that I have dealt with were a struggle for an adult let alone the fact the she ate dirt and survived—points for her ! ! ! !

The joys of mud soup.

I love how the doll in the first frame is paying rapt attention.

She had pork chops and applesauce…. Gee, that’s swell.

Mud pies & mud soup-no veggies.

Life was very different 44 years ago when this strip was written.

When I was around six, I used to amuse myself in the summer playing with my bucket and shovel in a small piece of dirt in front of my house. I enjoyed playing I was “down the shore”, but never thought of eating what I had dug up!

Let’s leave the April arc off for a while.

Mud pie. Yum. Actually, I had a mudslide pie for dessert last night at my birthday dinner. Too big to finish, but I tried.

Good thing April can handle feeding herself. Elly is spending money like there is no tomorrow. If Elly loses her job the Pattersons will have to live off of government cheese.

Eh, serves Ellie right for letting April play outside with no one watching. Even turning on the faucet—surely that would have tipped Ellie off that April at least needed to be checked on?

She must learned from the Peanuts.

I went through a mud pie phase. My mom would give me metal pie tins with which to make my creations. She knew I would never think of trying to eat them — yuk! It was all just make-believe. Then one lovely Summer day, as I was working with my pie tins and mud, the upstairs neighbor, Daisy, gave me a Hershey bar, supposedly to use in my pies. It didn’t occur to me that she was giving me the chocolate bar to eat — I really believed she expected me to use it in the mud pie, so that’s what I did … mostly — I ate 2 of the squares before putting the rest in the tins with the mud. I felt so guilty afterwards.