For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for February 05, 2023

It’s great to be the dad of little girls!

April doesn’t know what she wants.

Aypo got infected with Daddy jokes.

When the youngest g-kid was four she wanted me to read to her. As I read I also pointed out in the pictures what the story was describing. She would look at me, back to the book, then back to me. She then did the “put me down wiggle” slid off my lap, took the book out of my hands and scowled, “You’re not doing it right!” and off she went to grandma, cuz she could do it right. Tru story!

April prefers car crashes and explosions over a good drama.

A dentist who can’t read. That probably explains why nobody can read it when they write out a prescription. Doctors never learned how to write cursive either.

He never finished but I wonder if the third baby beer was a little pale ale?

Then Baby Bear went to get Poppa Bear’s tobacco. “G U N P O W D E R! Tobacco! I’m such a good speller,” cried Baby Bear. Then Baby Bear packed the tobacco in Poppa Bear’s pipe….

Children learn a lot from being read to…. sometimes unexpectedly.

For instance, between the title panel, where she says “weed”, and the fifth one, April has somehow learned to pronounce the "R"s in “porridge”, and by the final panel, she even says “read.”

It’s a miracle!

(yeah, yeah… I know.)

I like it

I used to do this with my kids, twisting and making up the whole thing, once they already knew the story. Kept them on their toes, and they loved it and correcting me.. My other ‘story’ was The Two Boys Story. I’d start out something like "Horace and Albert woke up at bedtime …… " and they would correct me with the right names and “we woke up in the MORNING Dad” … I’m make up outrageous things, and they would correct me, telling ME the story of their day. I loved the Two Boys Story.

Darned if you do, darned if you don’t

It can be real fun for a kid to fix it (correct daddy’s “mistakes”).

“There once was an incorrigible child named Ay-po..”

She is old enough to learn to properly pronounce her name.

Eh-pril!

When my mom reads aloud to me (to practice her English), every bear becomes a beer. :)

Several years later…

Becky: I got my book report ready for the class.

April{talking to herself}: Oh no, I didn’t even do it!

Teacher: Students will come to order. Now it is time for those oral reports we spent the last two weeks working on. Remember, these will be 20% of your final grade. We will go by alphabetical order.

April{giving herself smug look}: This is a good time to be a Patterson!

Teacher: Let us see, A..A…April? You are up!

The smirk is wiped off April’s face, replaced by bug eyes and April’s lower teeth showing in an expression of horror

All my children and grandchildren thought a silly misreading of a story, giving them the chance to correct me at every step, was great fun.

The entertainment value is what does it for April.

LOL, since this is a Canadian comic, from the 80s, the 3 beers are Molson Canadian, Export and Labatt’s Blue

Should’ve added “EH”

Dad for the win

This is my favourite FBOW comic.

no wonder kids think their parents are dumb

This is really picky, but April pronounces “read” as “weed” in the first panel, but as “read” in the last.

She’s going to be a newspaper editor…

My kind of reading to my own daughter…..

yup yup yup ! ! !

ok that was adorable!

I bet a lot of Papa Bears would love to read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Beers.

I used to do that with my grandchildren. They loved it when I made up stuff.

That’s how I sometimes read stories to my (now grown) kid. He would always correct me with: “No, no, no! They were bears.”

When I would read Green Eggs and Ham the kids would have it memorized. To stir them up just for fun I started adlibbing the entire book. The kids got all agitated and kept correcting me. So I I would start the book again and read it correctly.

The kids would get even more upset and tell me to read it my way, not not the old way! Hilarious!

Instead of “Do you like green eggs and ham? Do you like them, Sam I Am? Do you like them in a house? Do you like them with a mouse.”

I would adlib “Do you like purple eggs and spam? Do you like them George I Am? Do you like them in a car? Do you like them with a rat?”

I had such fun and so did they. It was especially fun when their teachers would come back from the break I had given them. They were shocked! Lots of giggling kids! The teachers would join in the laughter.

I had a female physics professor in college who used to read that story to her little girl. Whenever she came to the part about how the big bowl was too hot and the medium bowl was too cold, my professor always inserted, “which defies the laws of thermodynamics.” One day, the little girl asked her daddy to read the story. He read it without commentary, to which his daughter replied, “That’s not how mommy reads it!”

Daddy’s girl…

She likes Daddy’s goofy version…..

When I read to my nieces I become very easily distracted, keep up a running literary critique, and interrupt the story to make ridiculous predictions of how it will end. They eat it right up.

I bet that household buys earplugs by the thousands.

I know it’s a comic and I’m an old fuddy-duddy. But when I grew up, the child would have been told “I’ll keep reading the story when you stop that yelling.” John shouldn’t be teasing her, but she should be taught that even when frustrated, it’s not right to yell and scream. Okay, oldster lecture over, lol.

Adorable

Absolutely inspired!

Good old dads.