For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 26, 2024

Hardly!

This was originally from January 1995, the wall fell in December 1989, just over 5 years before.

Wonder if Lynn totally made up the story by herself or she read or hear it somewhere. Mike hit gold with that janitor. Unfortunately many immigrants get menial jobs like this guy but it seems they tend to be grateful for a job and a roof over their heads. Basic human needs. Nothing wrong with that if he’s happy with what he has

Billions of life stories, but we only know of a very few of them. So much lost over time.

Nice bug-eyed look on Michael in the last panel. Lynn does a great job drawing expression. :)

Are you kidding? Boring? I’m sorry this is only a short report! I want to write a whole book!

Sometimes we hear stories that shine a better light on immigrants and what they have endured. Maybe we should remember that when people are complaining about the southern border.

And he ended up as a janitor. Not your typical “American success story”.

Mike is not bored at all! He’s getting a real education…

Not me! I want to hear the rest of the story!

Some of my Vietnamese tenants had harrowing, life threatening stories. One in particular had been a soldier in the SV army so was ripe for elimination when the north took over. He had to escape separately from his wife and children. Her escape boat was attacked by pirates but she and the kids were some of the lucky one and lived. After he got to the US he was assigned to the east coast while she was relocated here on the west. They were separated for five years before he could relocate here. BTW, the Vietnamese have been, by far, the best, most reliable and conscientious tenants.

Great storyline.

A budding Studs Terkel.

First rule of interviews: bring a recorder. No way is he getting this story down verbatum.

Ulp! What did you do that caused such a beating?!

I think Michael may be in shock. I don’t think he has ever heard about people in ‘the outside world’ and the difficulties with which they had to contend ! ! ! !

Reminds me of a paper I had to write in high school. I had to interview someone just like Michael is doing. I chose this older gentleman who had the property that bordered ours out in the country. He lived in a one room house (shack by most standards) that he was born in and grew up in. Worked the land all his life. It was a very colourful piece.

Thanks Lynn for that trip down memory lane!

This guy has Frazz beat.

Life well Lived !

I had a French teacher in high school – about 80 years old. One day he caught a kid doodling swastikas in his notebook in class.

The whole class became a rant about how he was a POW of the Germans in both world wars. How he and a bunch of other prisoners started to puzzle out English in German prison from an Agatha Christie paperback they had in the cell with them. How the Russians liberated them, but how he was then shanghaied back to Russia, his year in a Siberian re-education camp, his being asked to spy on American diplomats in Turkey, his asking those diplomats for asylum and “That’s how I got here.”

A good lesson, especially for an aspiring journalist. If you don’t think anyone around you is interesting, you probably haven’t asked the right questions.

Those living in comfort in the modern west have no idea what sacrifice and hardship looks like. They have numbed themselves with the freedom so many died to secure while people from communist regimes had to struggle for any freedom at all.

Western Civilization dies as people “Netflix” and “Vibe”.

Jackpot.

Let us not forget. This country was founded by Immigrants who removed the Native Americans to other territories. I am White, and always wonder just how the Native Americans feel when they see these post about immigrants…. just a thought.

It’s amazing the stories people have in them, stories you wouldn’t have any idea of unless you walked up to them and talked to them. ;-)

“And I lived” – sometimes that’s the most important part!

Stop and think about it. EVERY person in the USA. other than indigenous peoples, is either an immigrant or descended from one. Unlike what one person said, immigrants are NOT “all animals”.

Until Mike finds out the janitor is a failed fiction writer and habitual liar…

Not boring at all!- – learning!

East Germany has free education, free day care, free healthcare, rent control, guaranteed employment and social security. Why would anyone want to leave?

No, I don’t think so. It sounds like that caretaker has a fascinating story.

I know that if I met such a person, that would be the most interesting person in the world. Stand aside Dos Equis guy!

Not at all, sir.

My ex’s father was a very quiet person, but he gave me a written account once of his being captured at Bataan and his escape from the POW camp at San Fernando, then helping American soldiers hide from the Japanese. You just never know.

quite thee opposite actually. :D

Lynn liked to drop these stories in on occasion. There’s another quick Sunday one with an Ethiopian cab driver. I liked these little human interest angles.

Escaped from East Germany – no easy feat.

I don’t know why it just now struck me: the Germans in the Russian Zone suffered the Great War, the hyperinflation of the German Reich (Weimar Republic), the Nazis, and the Russians, who had learned to hate everything German during WW2. 75 years – a lifetime – of four versions of desperation culminating with unification in 1989. What a waste of human potential and human hopes.

Wow…

I know what it’s like to be interviewing someone and think to myself, “I’ve struck gold.”

What I wouldn’t give to be sitting right next to Michael and listening to the Janitor’s story! I think Michael just got his world rocked!

East Germany and the Wall, huh? Are we still supposed to be pretending this is today, and not 1995?

Then again, if it were 1995, this guy would have to be in his mid-40s tops to have had an East German childhood (as opposed to being born under a still darker regime). He looks older than that. But given how harrowing his youth was, I suppose he may have come by rapid aging honestly.

East Germany, eh?… Good opportunity to tell some whopper stories…

I want to hear the rest of his story! <3

Today’s generation can not understand a story lie that……….spoiled!!

Told you yesterday… Mike was on to something. What a great story by this ‘invisible’ University employee. Get it all down, Mike, you are on the way to an “A” on that paper.

Michael’s AGOG face says it all!

Legal immigration! Obviously you don’t have a clue on the impact of this illegal mass migration on our southern border. Much less the impact on our country. Legal immigration as per our established laws. The southern borders are being run by the cartels now.

I am not bored. Please go on.

@Coopersdad- Maybe so, but NOTHING compares to the atrocities that Africans faced when they were snatched from their Motherland and brought to a strange places, and tortured as slaves. These people know NOTHING about what inhumane and horrible treatment is! (I could be wrong…)

It’s not the immigrants, it’s the unmanagable volume.

This is a great story arc. Starting with a mundane boys-night-out and turning into an epiphany for Michael.

And so, a $50,000.00 advance writing career begins

It’ll make a great screenplay, just add some explicit sex and violence

Easy A!

The janitor at my kids’ elementary school in California was a refugee from one of the Eastern European countries then under Soviet dictatorship. My kids are grown now and I wish I’d asked the man more of his story.

Not at all, but a few more details might be nice.

Bored??

Oh yeah, yes sir, yep, uh huh, you bet……………………………….. NOT!

oh you mean the illegals. there is a difference ya know.

A college classmate told me about escaping from a communist country. It was very hard to follow, in English, as she was barely able to speak above a whisper.

I remember thinking at one time that I’d led a pretty boring life. Then someone interviewed me about the different jobs I’d had, from store clerk, to EMT, to chemist, to professional translator, to IT professional, plus more. The interviewer made me realize that my life was far more than I had ever thought of it on my own. Getting another perspective was the key.

I don’t think so!!

Lynn’s Comments: This story begins with the true account of a friends’ desperate bid to escape from East Germany. He managed to crawl through barbed wire, elude guards, and hide in a frozen trench. He made his way to Canada and I met him at art school. We remain good friends today. So many people have incredible stories. You just have to ask.

https://fborfw.Com/strip_fix/friday-january-26-2024

When I was a little kid in the 60s living in small town northern BC we had an elderly neighbour couple who were Ukrainian…at that young age I had no concept of Nations, and no idea what or where ‘Ukraine’ was, other than it was somewhere different and far away…being shown a spot on an old globe, a corner of something called ‘USSR’ didn’t quite connect. All I knew is that Harry was a nice guy, but kinda grumpy. Gramma Rose was sweet and kind and made the very best pickles and sauerkraut and headcheese, and was sure that her grandsons who lived on the next farm over were going to be NHL stars (she was right about that, as it turns out!)

After Harry passed away I would visit her to either buy or deliver eggs and/or fresh milk, depending on who had a producing cow or laying chickens at the time. And while she had a huge family who was very involved with her, for whatever reason she chose to spend time with the young neighbour kid and bit by bit her story came out. It was even more amazing that she liked me, given that I was probably the only kid from our town who did NOT play hockey, LOL.

She told of surviving, just barely, Stalin’s era…she didn’t call it the Holodormor, it was just…life. And it was disturbing and thought-provoking and humbling. I recall, after one particularily scary narrative, going home and being really grateful for my ‘boring’ dinner of home raised chicken and vegetables…

I was so grateful, not for the accounts so much – the stories, to this day, give me the colleywobbles – but more for the lesson in listening and paying attention to the folks around me, especially the elderly…

Not at all

Boring, so far that’s a fascinating story, please keep going.

I was glad to read Jynn’s comment that he “went through barbed wire.” The “over the wall” reference in the strip made me think the custodian must have made up the story — the wall was between East Berlin and West Berlin, the rest of West Berlin and all the border with West Germany was fences, guard towers, minefields, etc.

Quite the contrary.

No sir, that story is not boring, no one can get bored of hearing a story like that!