Author Archives: stripfix

Tuesday September 19, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This is from my childhood. I used to lean on my mom when she was cooking and annoy my dad when he was reading the paper, and at the time, I didn't know why. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized I was looking for affection. It’s not always easy or convenient to stop what you're doing and hug your kids, but when I was a young mom, I tried.

Tuesday September 12, 2017

Lynn's Comments: When I wrote about the children in the strip, I tried to create situations that were very obviously not about my own children. Nonetheless, Aaron had to explain over and over that Martha didn't exist! He even got a letter from a Martha, wondering if she was "the one."

Monday September 11, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I did this. I had become somewhat good at wallpapering and offered to do my mother-in-law’s kitchen. She chose a Lily of the Valley pattern, and it wasn’t until I’d finished the entire room that she noticed the blossoms were upside down!

Wednesday September 6, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I often used to start big projects after dinner when the kids were in bed and the house was quiet. The trouble with this was that I couldn’t stop when I was tired–I was always determined to finish the job…which might be 3:00am.

Sunday September 3, 2017

Lynn's Comments: When my daughter reads this now, she'll laugh out loud–she and I can spend a full day in a good mall and wish we had more time!

Saturday September 2, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Creating storylines for the strip allowed me to go back and forth between child and grownup. As Elly, I would live in the moment; talk about the day-to-day things a mom might deal with. As Michael, entering junior high school, I would become a teenager again. It doesn't take much to open up those difficult, exciting, passionate, and intensely private times. Try it. Take yourself back to grade 8 and see how much you remember. When adults dismiss teenagers as being "just kids," we are forgetting how brilliant, aware, creative and fragile we were.

Thursday August 31, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I remember so clearly moving from Ridgeway Elementary School to Sutherland Senior Secondary. The girls were all beginning to mature. Our bodies were changing faster than the boys’ were, and suddenly our bodies were on display. This was my impression anyway. We had gone from being almost unisex beings–bumping into each other and roughhousing without too much interest in shape or size, to being physically checked out. Checked out, as in what are you wearing under what you are wearing? It wasn’t just the boys checking out the girls, it was everyone checking out everyone else. We were all changing and we wanted to know who was in the lead and who was lagging.

Sunday August 27, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Occasionally, I would use the strip for a personal rant. I got my point across to my family in a way that was, perhaps, more palatable than the real thing. Not to say that I didn't rant about this for real. I did. The best part of putting real feelings out there…was the response I got from readers who said how true it was. Some said they had given this strip to the guilty parties to show their frustration. I had put their and my feelings in print. Somehow, seeing a situation on the comics page legitimized it.

Saturday August 26, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I remember my first kiss. It was in Teddy D’s attic. He and Joanne K and Terry M and myself were playing spin the bottle. When the bottle matched me up with Terry, we leaned forward and kissed on the lips. I remember the feeling. It was fast, dry, and his upper lip was really fuzzy.