Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: … and then, suddenly, everything went Jerry Springer

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Mike Peterson Published: July 13, 2011 1 minute 4 comments

Between Friends has a grip on normalcy that works for me on a regular basis.

I can, for example, remember those … um … interfaces with middleschool aged offspring in which you would begin to get this sense that it was no longer a debate or a discussion or even an argument but simply a test to see where your batshit line was drawn and what would happen when it was crossed.

I also remember those post-mortem conversations with a trusted friend, in which you tried to reconcile what had just happened with your self-image as a sane, rational, marginally competent parent.

My kids were good kids. We communicated well, they understood how the family worked, there was never a moment when I wasn't pleased and proud and happy that they were my children.

But there were moments when I had to step back and realize that one of us was going to have to get a grip and, much as it went against my reptilian response mechanism, it was obviously going to have to be me. And, at the moment, the only thing I really wanted to get a grip on was sitting across the table ingenuously driving me over the brink of madness.

Sometimes, you could see it coming waaayyy over the horizon, and you'd think to yourself, "Surely, surely he can see the utter futility of this argument," and "Surely he can foresee that this is going to get ugly and that he can't possibly win, if only from the standpoint of who controls the car, the refrigerator and the money …"

And then other times, you'd be having this discussion that you thought, in your parental wisdom, was imparting some kind of wider lesson about life and responsibility and choices, when, suddenly, as in today's cartoon, out of the kid's mouth would come flyin' a declaration that could make Jerry Springer duck and cover.

Now, "Between Friends" is decidedly and proudly a women's strip, but not chauvinistically so. The humor is accessible and, in fact, today's gag is an example of the sort of well-balanced feminism that informs the strip.

I wince when someone refers to herself as a "domestic engineer" or attempts to justify her status by totalling up what she would earn if her duties as a homemaker were split up and parcelled out on the open market. It seems like a lot of prickly defensiveness for a lifestyle choice with which you ought to be perfectly comfortable and that doesn't need to be justified in order to be valid.

But I recognize that it is a pointless exercise born of equally foolish, off-target societal messages, and I can certainly empathize with the implied response Susan made to Emma between the third and fourth panel.

It's that visceral Jerry Springer moment all parents wince to remember, made more sweet in this case because Susan does, indeed, have a full-time job.

In other words, it's not as simple as "You've insulted my own lifestyle choice."

No, it's "Dear God, what kind of woman-child am I raising that this could come out of her mouth and have I really done such a completely, systematically rotten job of being a parent for the past 12 years?"

I have been that parent between the third and fourth panel. These tender moments are best left unrecorded, so that they can later be presented in clear, Roshomon-style clarity to therapists.

Had I not been on the road for the past several days, I would have flagged this story arc earlier, and it's well worth your time to go back and follow this conversation from the beginning.

Every train wreck begins with but a single step, and each step in this one has been hilarious.