For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for October 23, 2020

we’re all different in some ways, but the same in others… am I right?

Lizzie’s getting good advice from someone who KNOWS. :D

I can really relate to this one.

Caring and thought provoking.

If you like today’s strip’s message, be sure to give it a like.

My experience is that in school (like the army and prison), status is a zero-sum game: you raise yours at the expense of someone else’s!

People are always anxious and afraid of anything that is different, strange, unknown, odd, alien and react poorly. Darwinism would have it as the survival of the fittest by removing those foreign seeming things from the equation. Animals in the wild do. Humans are thinking and emotional species so we do things differently but there will always be people with Darwinian thinking – lingering ancient DNA, perhaps.

I don’t know how “preachy” they ended up getting with Miss Edwards, but I recall liking what I saw of her. Knowledgeable and relatable without being “BE NICE TO CRIPPLED PEOPLE!” and soapboxing so much. Sadly, the thing I remember most about her is one of the various Anti-Lynn essays of the early 2000s noting that “Elly wondered darkly why Elizabeth was never coming to HER for advice”.

The final panel reveal here is one of the best in this comic strip.

Lynn’s Comments: This was a segue into the introduction of the teacher in a wheelchair. I had wanted to show someone in a chair for a while, but didn’t know how or when to do it. Strange, since we all know someone who is disabled. Miss Edwards became a favourite character, but again, I had little space in which to feature one of Elizabeth’s teachers.

The message is simple Liz: You get to be different for a few weeks, Miss Edwards is different for life.

“Afraid of being different”. Ah, the cookie cutter mentality that has plagued that generation for decades.

I remember this teacher.

Very good advice.

True. But sometimes it can morph into something cruel. When my first husband died, my daughter was in elementary school. She was already a student who had some medical issues and had been ostracized. And then when her Dad died, some kids were quite mean in their so-called “teasing”. They would say things like, “YOUR DAD IS DEAD!!!! YOUR FACE KILLED YOUR DAD!” Really mean stuff. I tried to explain to her that it was their FEAR of maybe having their OWN Dads dying. I think she accepted that, but it was so painful for her. And me, too.

Preachy.

Or teenagers are often just mean. They don’t know why and probably don’t have a deep underlying reason. They just are. Most grow out of it but some are mean for life.

people are different . just me elizabeth thats makes this world

That last panel hit hone like a ton of lead.

People are creeps, then.

Reminds me of school. Makes me tear up…

Exhibiting/encouraging kindness and tolerance is commendable, not “preachy”

It is common to make light of our own trials and tribulations. It is a sign of strength and endurance(some think). but when others make light of our challenges, it’s mean. Don’t be mean.

Maybe it’s just me, but the first panel does not sound like an accurate explanation of any teasing I’ve ever heard of or experienced.

My FIL would give this advice…grow up, and grow a thicker skin. This may not set with the sentimentalists here, but it is good advice if badly stated.

Very nice two-day leadup and punchline. No indication of the chair yesterday, even in the approach frame.

So very true.

I dunno, I think they are probably just a bunch of jerks.

Nice sentiment and probably true in some cases. However, there are kids who just get their jollies making fun of anyone who is a bit different.

I will tell on myself a little: When my son was in middle school, he brought home his “annual” and we were going through it looking at the photos of his classmates. There was one young man about whom I commented that “he looks like a real dork” and my son got mad at me. He told me the boy was in the special needs class and we “do NOT make fun of them”. I was so proud of him I could burst!

People tease people who are different because they’re afraid it could happen to them. People have it in for you if you’re different and they’ll NEVER EVER let you forget you are different. That’s people for you.

Miss Edwards is a kind person, but I have to disagree with her idea of teasing coming from curiosity. Perhaps some does, but I’ve never seen it happen. I found that people will make fun of others for any reason at all. When I was in high school, I was very thin, and I was teased for it. My friend was overweight, and she was teased for that. Some class members were slower to learn than others, and were teased for being “dumb”. Others like me learned more quickly and were teased for “thinking they’re so smart” or such things (“nerd” didn’t really get used much in my experience.)