"For Better or For Worse"

You have all heard the phrase and a lot of you have repeated it yourself (hopefully, only once) at a wedding. But, it is also the title of my favorite comic strip which has been published daily over the past 29 years. Unlike most comic strips, the characters are based on the real life family members of the writer, Lynn Johnston, and all have aged in real time.

And to peak my interest, the (Patterson) family members' ages parallel those of my own. Thus, our families have experienced many of the same joys, sorrows, disappointments, and successes together over the past three decades. Whatever you could imagine that could happen to a family was there to be read daily in the funnies. Reading the daily postings of the Patterson family provided me "comic" relief to know that what I was living wasn't all that unusual.

People fell in & out of love, babies were born, kids grew up one day at a time, grandparents grew old and frail, Mom and Dad grew wiser with every crisis, Mrs. Patterson started a small business just like my own wife, and the family dog died much to my dismay. I've only cried twice in my life over a dog. Once was this past year when our own dog, Woobie, had to be put to sleep. The other was when Farley died, saving a kid from drowning, in spite of the fact that he was a tired old dog that gave everything he had left. I was really upset-both times!

Nevertheless, people move on and so did the strip. The Patterson's got a new dog and so did we. Edgar Patterson and Wrigley Meek were just what both families needed and life moved on. And that is the point of the comic strip. Real things happen to people. You need to enjoy the good times and roll with the punches during the bad.

Today, "For Better or For Worse" ended. What?!! It can't end. I'm not dead yet. I want an instant replay! Well, upon further review, it is not ending. It is starting over tomorrow, September 1st. It turns out Lynn Johnston is going to re-write the strip from the beginning while changing the things she would want to be different over the past 29 years. Wouldn't life be interesting if you could actually do that?

I'm not sure I could improve upon what has happened to my family. I have a great partner, my wife, and three great sons living lives more interesting than my own. So, I'll live my next 29 years vicariously through them while I follow the re-write of "For Better or For Worse".

For starters, she's bringing back Farley this week. It's de'ja` vu all over again.