Lynn's Comments: I got a lot of mail on this one. There are a lot of lonely people out there. In school, surrounded by people my own age, I considered myself lonely.
Lynn's Comments: The old adage, "misery loves company" described some of my early friendships. I gravitated to the kids who were on the outside looking in. We weren't exactly misfits…we thought we were misunderstood.
Lynn's Comments: Michael in the strip and my son in real life were named for a school friend - Michael VadeBoncoeur was destined to become a comedy writer. He eventually wrote for the CBC and created blackout comedy skits for places like Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto.
Lynn's Comments: These drawings were done before I began to pay real attention to anatomy. Check out the length of the kids’ arms. In real life their bodies would be impossibly long! As someone who once did anatomical drawings for a living, this surprises me!
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.
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."
Lynn's Comments: People were always telling me I should "cut Elly’s hair". This would have taken away a very recognizable feature of the character, so the best I could do was to bunch it up or tie it back. This strip gave me the opportunity to address the readers’ observation.
Lynn's Comments: In a TV sit-com, you can get away with changing a character with a haircut or a hair colour because the character is a real person. In a comic strip, the art often reflects an artist’s style to the point where hair, posture, and even clothing are used to clearly identify the character. Charles Schulz once told me, "If it wasn't for hair and clothing, all my characters would look alike!" He drew them all in his own unique style.
Lynn's Comments: Having done this to Elly’s hair, I was now bound to have her "curly" for a long time! If I was to do a realistic story, I had to have a realistic outcome.
Lynn's Comments: The curly hair story brought thanks from folks who were telling me to change Elly’s hair, complaints from folks who thought it was ugly, and very personal letters from women and men who were waiting for a hair disaster to grow out. Hair, it seems, is very serious stuff.
Lynn's Comments: Did I ever get into hot water over this one! Clinic staff wrote to say that it was a terrible thing to write notes in patients’ files suggesting they were difficult to work with and that PITN should never have been used. Well, we did write small notations like this just for our own information…and, the letters were: PITA!
Lynn's Comments: This was a strip that warmed a lot of hearts, and was one that I was particularly proud of. If it weren’t for particles in the air, sunbeams wouldn’t show up. This is one of the rare instances when one can appreciate dust!