For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 16, 2023

Mike. It will never be a spare room until you get married, Mike. During college years, you’ll come home and sleep in your room. Until your wedding day or a permanent residence in another city or in town with a permanent job which enables you to buy a home of your own, this stays your room.

Which will sit there, like a shrine, to be dusted but not disturbed.

Back in 1972 my pal went to uni, and I persuaded his parents to rent his room to a colleague of mine!

When my husband was a teen he went to Europe to visit with his father for a while. When he went home there was no one to pick him up at the airport. He managed to get a ride to his house only to find that his key didn’t fit the lock any more. He knocked on the door. A stranger opened it, handed him a note & closed the door. The note was from his mother. The note said that she & his sisters had moved (she didn’t tell him where) and she had placed his stuff with friends.

He’ll be back with dirty laundry before you know it.

I miss my childhood home. Both my parents died some years ago and the house was sold. It’s weird to know other people live in it.

“School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,”—Ivan Illich. “We get three educations. The first is from our parents; the second is from our schoolmasters. The third is from life. The last makes liars of the first two.”—Montesquieu. “I had wonderful teachers in the first and second grades who taught me everything I know. After that, I’m afraid, the teachers were nice, but they were dopes…I have a lack of ideology, and not because I have an animus against any particular ideology; it’s just that they don’t make sense to me…they get in the way of thinking. I don’t see what use they are…University and uniformity, as ideals, have subtly influenced how people thought about education, politics, economics, government, everything…We are misled by universities and other intellectual institutions to believe that there are separate fields of knowledge. But it’s clear there are no separate fields of knowledge. It is a seamless web.”-Jane Jacobs, author of THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES

Where I live; London is just down the road, going to visit my mother, who still lives there. Maybe I should buy a bus, charge $40 and start a FBoFW tour company.

This is still London Ontario, I guess? I was in the other London recently.

Excellent philosophy Michael, from a well adjusted, understanding son. Life moves on, you can live in the past or take charge of the future. Your future doesn’t mean leaving others behind, it just means living you life, as they too need to live theirs. There will always be a place for you when you come back to visit.

My son is 35 years old, has a good job, and lives in another city… he comes to visit, he sleeps in “his” room. It will ALWAYS be his room.

Don’t say that, Mike; you will want your room back from time to time.

One guy’s parents moved while he was in boot camp and didn’t give him the new address.

i went to college and returned for break. Mom gave my room to my sister and I was relegated to the sleeper sofa. hmm Wonder why I didn’t visit more?

My final two years of high school were spent in a boarding school out of state. After that, between college, Army, employment, travel, and marriages, I was only home for holidays, school vacations, and later for occasional short visits. But until my mother passed away in 2001 and the house was sold, my bedroom and my brother’s room, were virtually unchanged after we’d left home – same beds, dressers, desks, etc.

It was a very strange feeling being in that room on the week of Mom’s funeral, knowing that after 57 years, it would be the last time I would ever sleep in my bedroom.

Looks like April is going to get a room of her own.

Wow. Mike sure has matured. And look how tall!

Knew a “Mom” once who kept her son’s room just as he left it – years after he had married and moved on. Yes, the family used it as a spare room / guest room, but all of his things were as he left it. It was sort of nice visiting and staying overnight.

Relax, Cru-Elly. You still have a teenage daughter to nag, stalk, and order about until she’s miserable.

He doesn’t leave for awhile yet? I should think the semester starts in two or three weeks, and they’ll want him to report sooner than that for freshman orientation.

Better yet, a spare closet. Moms never meet an empty closet they don’t commadere.

Had my old room until the house was torn down to become the front lawn of a bank. Would use it during visits even after I had my own place for years.

Getting some peace and quiet and a lot less slip.

Our daughter has a home and family of her own but Mom still refers to her childhood bedroom using our daughter’s name.

Or in the case of the Patterson’s another room for April to trash.

Mike will be back. Don’t worry, readers. Lynn Johnston’s real life kids left home for school and did not come back, so I expect this comic strip reflects that reality for the author.

At least the people grow up in this Comic.

Just what any mom wants to hear…not!

My parents were living in Iran where my dad had been transferred, and I was going to college in Idaho. My mother insisted that the apartment they rented would have a Gary’s room.