For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for April 28, 2021

Make that three things…

How is this going to work for Michael? John already told him that he was not going to get to drive until he paid for his own gas and his own insurance. How is Michael going to get this license without parental consent or proof of insurance?

Oh? What’s the other thing? Childproof protection?

I just renewed my driver’s license and chose to be a donor. My parts are old but obviously still working!

Condoms left in wallets aren’t reliable (it’s really an unsafe place to keep them). It’d be shame to burst his bubble.

He will be surprised for what he needs more.

Look out, girls! Stud Muffin Patterson is on the loose!

In his case, the second is a student ID.

True a man needs two things in his wallet. A driver’s permit and a rubber. But aren’t you forgetting about money? (Probably this dialog was written by a woman.)

Oh Mike you have lot learner

A credit card might be more useful.

Go on with your bad self, Mike

Wait, he’ll flunk the drivers test.

Like he and Martha have ever.

Lynn’s Comments:

Yes, I did get some cranky mail about this one. I also got a few thanks!

Yup. ID and cash. Everything else is pretty much a waste of money one way or another.

I had the other thing in my wallet. Once, I almost got to use it.

Like the scene in Parenthood where a boy was down that his estranged father did not want to spend time with him, and the mother did not know how to react. The husband of the boy’s sister, played by Keanu Reeves, told his mother-in-law: “You know, you need a license to practice medicine, to drive a vehicle, even to catch a fish. But the world allows any a#$%$le be a father.”

Michael is so Roadside.

A new item has been added to what to carry in your wallet…..your COVID vax card to prove you received your proper dosage and have immunity so you may join the herd.

Yep..only two things ,and one of them he will actually use! ;o}

And exactly how and where will Michael acquire the other ‘item’?

Driver’s license and one of those round thingies…

Yet do you need a parent with that driving permit? I not trust a 16-year-old kid on driving by themselves.

Many a 16 year old boy in my red-neck part of the woods, used to get their learner’s permit, and take their driver’s test, all on their birthday. The rules have changed now so that can’t be done anymore, but it was done 60 years ago in my state.

Back when I started driving in PA, you had a “junior” license until age 17. We called it a Cinderella license – it had a curfew. 11 pm, I think.

I carry nothing of value in my wallet. Years of travel have taught me to carry a dummy wallet with a couple of bucks in it and some cards that look like credit cards to satisfy a pickpocket or a robber.

Cash is carried on a money clip that has a holder on the back for my debit card, cédula ( national i.d.), and driver’s license and not visible to a potential thief

In the fourth panel, Gordon is thinking that Michael and the other kid need glasses like him. Both of them are squinty!

Most of us have “gone there” to the joke that Lynn intended, but I would think that the second essential would be cash.

On my 16th birthday, my mom took me to the local driver’s license office – and it was closed that day because of a broken water pipe or some such thing. I was CRUSHED!!!

The “man” is still a MINOR, hence, still a child. Get over yourself, kid.

Reading some of the responses, I am compelled to channel Dorothy Zbornak, of The Golden Girls.

“CONDOMS, PEOPLE! CONDOMS, CONDOMS, CONDOMS!!!!!!”

Had a sex ed teacher inform us condoms carried around in a wallet would deteriorate to the point of being useless.

He wishes…

The other thing of course is a list of emergency contact phone number. After all, what else could it be?? ;-)

Money being the other? Or these days a credit card?

money helps

Were we ever that young?

I don’t doubt that a twerpy 15-year-old boy who’s never been in the same room as a naked woman would make such a tough-guy “man of experience” remark to look cool in front of his friends, but it doesn’t make me want to smack him upside the head any less.