For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 13, 2025

Hello WUSS!

Gee, Liz is just as tall as her mother! Comic strip kids sure grow fast (physically).

Cheer up Liz, it’s only a phase.

I used to love to go out with my mother. I’d get all dolled up too, hoping maybe I would run into some cute boy. Not going to happen sitting in my room!

Ah, the teen years stage on the continuum from being pushed in a pram by mom to eventually pushing Mom in a wheelchair followed by shopping alone and thinking “ oh look, Mom would have aloved/hated/laughed at this!”

In Denmark, it’s extremely common for mother and daughter to go shopping together, whether the daughter’s age is 2 or 20.

That’s the way I handle it. I tell them: “I’m leaving in 15 minutes, if you want to go, you’ll be waiting at the door with your coat and boots on”….. If they’re ready, we’ll go. If they’re not ready, then I don’t wait and keep asking them.

I’m glad that my girls never went through the “I don’t want to be seen with my mother” phase, but what helped was that their friends all liked me, too…mostly because I didn’t try to act like them. I was cool because I was uncool.

I am only 5’ 2. A shortie. And Liz, some day you will miss your mother. Take advantage of it!

What is wrong with her?!

I learned to judge women by the relationship they had with their mother. Struck Pay Dirt with my wife.

Good for Elly! Get right to the point and don’t mess around. If Liz wasn’t at the door, I think Elly would’ve left without her.

Someday, dipstick, you’ll wish your mother were around to go places and do things with. SIGH!

Just do it, don’t be a wuss!

I tried that with my 18 year old stepson (he was still in bed) before hubby and I were married. I was visiting and going to look for a job in the next town over. Well, I told him I’m leaving at 9:00. Then I’m leaving in 30 minutes. Then leaving in 15 minutes. Then at 9:00 I said goodbye and left. He was stunned! Everyone else had always catered to him. He learned the hard way.

Oh, and by the way, many years later we are great friends!

She wuss just saying….

But being with your mother is better than stewing in a bowl of self-pitty.

Downtown? Who goes downtown anymore? Now, it’s all malls and the Internet (at least that’s how it is in Ohio).

(Yep. This is an old strip. I know that. Just posting for the heck of it.)

And there you have it…….

Some days one feels like a wuss. So little problem looking like one.

Once while shopping for a snowboard long ago, my 14-year-old son came over to me in panic and said, “Dad, that kid who just came in knows me. Pretend you don’t.” I had a mischievous urge to point directly at him and yell, “I don’t know you, Son!” But I’d been in his shoes at nearly the same age, so I just masked my laughter and loved him all the more.