Elizabeth: Browse The Strips

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: During the 60s, I loved a band called "The Ventures." I had all their records and I played them over and over. My mother would clap her hands over her ears and beg me to turn it off. "That is not music!" she'd tell me, "That is just horrible, awful noise!" The other day in the car I turned my satellite radio station to the "oldies," and right there was a tune by the Ventures! I hadn't heard them for years, and there they were! I tapped my hands on the wheel along with the straining, wowing chords, and remembered dancing with my girlfriends in the basement--trying to look like the kids on "Dance Party." I could see what my mom was talking about though; to someone who sang along to Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, and Rogers and Hammerstein, it was a lot of awful noise. I guess it's all about what you grew up with. This makes me wonder--will my grandkids wax poetic about Pop?

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Lynn's Comments: My dad did say I had puny tails, and it was no joke. Ponytails were a big deal in those days. Long hair was admired. I wanted long hair so badly, I cried every time my mother cut it.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Lynn's Comments: When she was four years old, my daughter, Katie, wanted to have her ears pierced. I told her it was a painful procedure and perhaps she should wait until she was a bit older. She insisted. Her friends had pierced ears and she wanted to be part of the crowd. I finally gave in and took her to Robert's Jewellers, the local jewellery store.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Kate happily chose the studs, which would be inserted. She understood that she wouldn't be able to wear anything else until she had healed. Mr. Roberts cleaned her ears and put a small blue dot on the lobe of each ear, where he would make the piercing. Her brother watched eagerly.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Our dog, Willy had a permanent roost under Katie's chair. As soon as she was seated, he'd race into position and wait. It didn't take long for her to become an accomplice in the game of "don't feed the dog." This charade went on relentlessly, and the only player who lost was me.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This happened. It's one of those situations where you don't want to get angry--after all, when a kid does something she's asked to do, you want to show encouragement. You hope that by thanking her graciously for her efforts now, you are creating a willing and helpful teenager down the road. --Heh.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Lynn's Comments: We once owned the full set of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. I bought this enormous set of books when we lived in tiny Lynn Lake, Manitoba. It was an arctic community into which you really had to fly. At the time, the population wasn't much more than 1200. There was only one radio station, there was no library, and the newspaper came a day late. Other than folks selling things like Avon, there were no door-to-door salespeople--it was just too far to go! When a young Britannica salesman came to our door, I was surprised. I invited him in. I had been thinking that in this area some encyclopaedias would be a great investment. He started to rattle off his pitch, but I stopped him and said it was OK! I was going to buy the whole set! He looked me in the eye in absolute disbelief. "Lady," he said, "I have flown to just about every small community in northern Manitoba, and you are my very first sale!"

Monday, October 19, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Friends of ours held a pumpkin carving contest every year on the porch of their big North Bay home. There were pumpkins of all colours, shapes and sizes, and the resulting array of faces and pumpkin personalities, which decorated their outdoor staircase, was something we'll always remember.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This scenario is from a Little Lulu cartoon I read as a kid. Little Lulu had found a potato which looked exactly like her friend Tubby. When he found out, he went crazy and chased her all over town to get it. The story line ended with him eating the raw potato. I thought it was hilarious! Funny--the things you remember.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I had a terrible time with math. I used my fingers until I was stopped. Then I learned that if I kept my ruler on top of my desk, I could use it to help me add and subtract.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This was my grade two teacher. She actually rapped me on the head with my pencil, calling me "Germ spreader!" The thing which really got me down was that I hadn't bitten my pencil. I liked to keep my stuff in good shape. They were my brother's teeth marks she'd discovered.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Lynn's Comments: You'd think a lesson learned once would be ingrained forever. Not so: the hangover. Even without a partying lifestyle, I think I still average one every five years.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This was another true-to-life scenario. I was down and out. Katie brought me a blanket and offered to rub my back. True to the punch line, she now has two sweet kids and is a wonderful mother.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I had such an island. I don't know if it was the story of Peter Pan or a project my mom gave us to do, but I had an imaginary island, and it was real.

One rainy North Vancouver day, my mom mixed up a paste using flour and water (and some other things), cut out flat cardboard bases, and helped my brother and me form an island in the middle of each one. We had to make mountains and bays, and when the paste was dry and hard, we coloured our islands with poster paint.

I took this project seriously. The ocean around my island was the deepest blue-green. There was a sandy beach in a rocky horseshoe-shaped bay. There was a forested mountain, and a jungle where I could pick tropical fruit. As I painted my island, I thought about how I got there and what I had to work with. A shipwreck was part of my story, of course, and I built an imaginary shack out of the remnants of a washed-up hull. I had a garden and I made a path to the mountaintop where I could watch for ships. Sometimes, a sailor or a passenger would be washed up on my shore and I would have imaginary adventures with this visitor. The visitors never stayed for long. It was, after all, my private imaginary space.

I daydreamed about this island all the time. When I was being bullied, I went to my island. When I was in trouble (sometimes for being a bully!), I went to my island. If I had a crush on a boy, he might be washed up on the island. Sometimes if a teacher was particularly nice, she might appear there, too. This fantasy went on until I was in high school! Even when I was well beyond childhood, I'd still find myself thinking, "You are allowed on my island." Or, "You are NOT allowed on my island!" It was a refuge. I was safe there. I had supreme control. There were no rainy days. It was a place of peace, and I think it helped me to survive some difficult times.

The island disappeared after many years--but I can still bring it into focus if I try

Friday, November 13, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I think I've grumbled about this before. When a woman (or anyone for that matter) becomes the chief cook and bottle washer--charged with shopping for, planning out, making, and serving up to three meals a day, she or he deserves at least a grunt of pleasure from the bodies who are shovelling in the grub. Actual thanks is wonderful!

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I loved it when a punch line like this came to mind. Funny lines would sometimes "write themselves." The trouble with this kind of pun-based comedy is that it is really hard to translate! Perhaps that's why my work was in so few outside markets and we see so few international comics here. Too often the gags are lost in translation.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: There's no punch line here. There should have been. Mike had an opportunity to answer the question with a smart comeback. I couldn't think of one--so, neither could he. This is when telling on-going stories, making one day's strip lead into another, saved my behind. Now and then I could end a strip with an obvious silence--and get away with it.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Lynn's Comments: We were cautioned against letting Farley get too heavy, as this would add pressure to the already stressed hip joint. Putting him on a diet wasn't easy--he would beg for table scraps and I hated to waste them.