For Better or For Rain
Cidu Bill on Oct 24th 2008
Kaitlyn: Is it funny because he’s got a raincoat, boots, and an umbrella on so he can’t get wet? But he can - umbrellas do jack against the rain, especially if they flip inside out. And the hood isn’t foolproof, again the wind.
I also don’t understand where they are and why she would leave him - he’s not more than six, right?
This is also kinda weird, because it’s raining today here and elsewhere, I’m sure. I know it rains somewhere every day, I just thought it was odd that I spent today running around in the rain and then I get home and don’t understand a comic about rain.
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, For Better or For Worse, Lynn Johnston, comic strips, comics, humor | 20 responses so far
grimalkin Oct 24th 2008 at 03:59 pm 1
I think it’s supposed to be funny because she said “go have fun” but just don’t do the only fun thing you can do when you’re a kid playing in the rain - get wet. He obviously hasn’t learned the soul-crushing ways of the Patterson clan yet.
Oh, and I think they’re just in their back yard.
Mark in Boston Oct 24th 2008 at 04:32 pm 2
At age six I was in first grade and walked to school half a mile each way all by myself. All of us kids did it. It was normal. A healthy child who took the school bus for a ride of less than a mile was considered a useless unworthy wimp. Now we are in our 50’s and my generation is full of your leaders and the inventors of the techology you use. What are today’s children going to grow up to be?
Lihtox Oct 24th 2008 at 04:34 pm 3
If you look at panel two, you see that he must already be wet since he’s standing in the rain. My guess is that his mother just automatically said “Don’t go getting wet” without actually thinking about it.
Christine Oct 24th 2008 at 04:41 pm 4
If you play in the rain, you’re gonna get wet.
Cidu Bill Oct 24th 2008 at 04:48 pm 5
Mark, the next generation wil have its own tales of hardship: Already my son is bemoaningthe fact that he has to walk a block and a half to the bus stop, EVEN WHEN IT’S RAINING!
I’m about the same age you are, and I also had to walk a bit over half a mile to school. Snowing just meant leaving the house a bit earlier. I would have killed for some of that global warming stuff…
Cidu Bill Oct 24th 2008 at 04:50 pm 6
Does anybody NOT think Christine’s comment would make a great country music song title?
Kaitlyn Oct 24th 2008 at 11:18 pm 7
You’re right - play in the rain means get wet and splash in puddles and jump on the trampoline. (My sister and I did that on a warm rainy day - no thunder of course - and so much fun!)
Mark, I hate comments like yours because they sound accusatory. “Why don’t you walk half a mile to school every day? You’ll be a wimp when you’re older!”
Charlene Oct 25th 2008 at 03:55 am 8
I hate comments like Mark’s because they perpetuate the illogical Survivor’s Fallacy.
People who talk like that assume that because they survived walking half a mile in the rain or playing all day without supervision or whatever, everyone survived. Nobody died accidentally, nobody was murdered: nothing bad ever happened. They then complain that modern parents are overprotective weasels because they themselves survived.
They forget that the kids who were killed doing whatever they’re proposing aren’t here to say “Hey! What about me?”
This hits close to home because a six-year-old girl who lived across the street from me was killed back in 1978. Someone watched her, saw that she was walking to school alone every day, swooped in, and raped and murdered her. Six years old. Kimmie isn’t here to tell you you’re wrong, Mark, so I guess I feel I have to.
bullthistle Oct 25th 2008 at 12:03 pm 9
Oh Brother! I guess I was a horrible parent for letting my kids play in the back yard? Please. The Pattersons live in some town in Canada 20 years ago, I don’t think letting Michael play in the backyard should cause any angst.
Cidu Bill Oct 25th 2008 at 12:37 pm 10
I think Mark’s comment has been taken for something it wasn’t: All he said was that kids aren’t expected to walk more than a few feet on their own two feet anymore.
Beyond that, I agree with Charlene: Those chain e-mails that list things like “When we were kids, we stood on the hoods of our parents’ cars while we drove and we’re all okay,” are stupid, because not everybody WAS okay.
We’ve got a odd dichotomy in play here: On one hand we’re trying to remove the slightest level of risk from our kids’ lives (like prohibiting running during recess), while on the other hand we’re mocking some of the most basic and rational safety precautions.
It doesn’t just seem to be a parents vs. non-parents thing, either.
The other day, I saw a batting helmet/face guard. For t-ball players. For anybody not familiar with t-ball, that an entry-level form of baseball where the kid hits the ball off a stationary tee, raised to chest level. The ball is never thrown in the direction of the batter. It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for the child to be hit. The child is in more danger from a meteor than from anything on the ballfield. Yet… this item is commercially sold and presumably purchased.
Howabominable (aka Lindsey ^_^) Oct 25th 2008 at 01:30 pm 11
Parenting is a work in progress. No “generation” did it perfect. As a society we’ve learned a lot about raising kids and keeping them safe, but a lot of the time we still do things wrong or go overboard. That’s how we learn and innovate and raise our children to progress society like they do - if we never made mistakes or had problems with our parenting styles, we would never figure out how to fix them. So glorifying one parenting style as the best is silly. Obviously parents today aren’t perfect. We’ve made some advances in some areas and need to work in others. But honestly, I don’t think having to walk a mile and a half to schcool is one of them. I had to walk a mile and a half to my bus stop, but I don’t think I’m a stronger or better person for it.
eeyore19 Oct 25th 2008 at 01:57 pm 12
As a child who loved to play in the rain like this, I get what Ellie’s getting at. She knows that Michael’s going to get a little wet from the rain but doesn’t want him splashing around in puddles and getting soaked.
Kaitlyn Oct 25th 2008 at 02:02 pm 13
My mom used to say things like that, and part of it is the “current generation’s” attachment to cell phones.
Of course, we should take ours with her and let her know where we are and if our plans change… she survived without cell phones, but her kids better have them.
One of my “favorites” had a bit about how “our” generation (born before 1970) developed all these great things. No one saw the irony in bitching about how those developments changed things.
Comments like that always seem to blame the current generation, the kids. I’m sure they’re not meant that way - after all, a kid doesn’t choose whether to walk to school or ride the bus, grown-ups do. The same grown-ups who won’t shut up about how much we coddle kids today.
My mom grew up in a teeny town, pretty far away from a city. I did not. So even if we both grew up in the 60s and 70s, we’d still have lived different lives.
Not everyone living in the “good old days” had the same experience.
Mark in Boston Oct 25th 2008 at 09:56 pm 14
Survivor’s Fallacy? You know, I always wondered why every few weeks another kid in my class would disappear without a trace, until finally I was the only one left. Now that I think about it, I guess they wanted to spare me the horror of knowing that one was hit by a car, one was eaten by a dog, and so on.
Size Oct 26th 2008 at 11:12 am 15
Mark in Boston - Friend, no one told you that you were growing up in a slasher movie!
Seriously - I think Bill is closest to the truth here. We focus on safety in areas that are completely unrealistic, like child abductions. Charlene, that is a terrible tragedy, but at any point in American history, a statistical outlier. We also ignore safety in areas that may turn out to be critical, like physical fitness.
Like Kaitlyn said, we will learn from out mistakes and face different problems than our parents did. As someone from the “MTV Generation” I’m a little tired of hearing about how awful kids are these days. (Not that I’m convinced that was even MiB’s original point, I don’t know him well enough to read that much into it). But yes, our kids will be dependent on technology, but what generation since the ancient Greeks hasn’t been in some way or another?
Cedar Oct 26th 2008 at 01:46 pm 16
In defense of today’s horrible, fat, lazy brats, I think one of the reasons why kids don’t walk and play outside all the time is due to the increasing suburbanization of our country; even cities are developing suburban qualities like sprawl and strict zoning. When I was a kid in the early 80s, I couldn’t really go anywhere in my neighborhood–my school was too far away to walk, and there weren’t any grocery stores, mini-marts, libraries, etc nearby to walk to–I lived (at least at that time) in a strictly residential neighborhood. And even if I did want to walk somewhere, we lived off of a major road with no sidewalks. I wouldn’t feel safe as an adult biking or walk on that road, much less let a child do that.
I live in a big(ish) city now, and once you get out of the downtown core and the few neighborhoods surrounding it, it becomes more or less a suburb. With a few exceptions, I wouldn’t want to let my kid run around with no supervision in these areas–it’s too car-centered, with too many major roads with high speed limits, and no where really to go.
Jeff S. Oct 27th 2008 at 04:37 pm 17
Kaitlyn said, “This is also kinda weird, because it’s raining today here and elsewhere, I’m sure. I know it rains somewhere every day…”
There’s a weatherman here in Oklahoma that says something like, “There’s a 100% chance of a 20% chance of rain somewhere in the state today.” I want to punch him 100% of the time when he says that.
Joshua Oct 28th 2008 at 12:36 am 18
bullthistle: The Pattersons don’t live “20 years ago” any more. They live in some vague and undefined year, due to Lynn Johnston’s desire to remove any chronological references from the new-run/repeats. See http://www.fborfw.com/fun/blog/archives/003462.php for comments on this; Lynn inserted a reference to “Shania Twain” in a strip that originally ran in 1980 or so.
Gcat Sep 8th 2009 at 05:01 pm 19
Cidu Bill
“I’m about the same age you are, and I also had to walk a bit over half a mile to school. Snowing just meant leaving the house a bit earlier. I would have killed for some of that global warming stuff…”
So, you would have rather walked in heaver snow? People like you are the reason the term “global warming” had to be changed to “climate change”.
Very very very simple definition of “global warming” Hot places get hotter, cold places get colder.
S.P. Charles Sep 8th 2009 at 05:09 pm 20
Um… That was a joke, Gcat. Bill constantly rants against the “global warming” misconception (re here), and he was making fun of his own little obsession.