(Strip Number 6138, 29 July 1984)
Panel 1: As our story continues, we find Elly taking Mike and Lizzie shopping. Since she's always on a diet and won't eat ice cream in public or in front of her family if she can avoid it, Elly is astonished when, having noticed the Ice Cream Circus store, the children want to go in.
Panel 2: Since she'd much prefer it if they could walk on by, she adopts Martyred Eye-Roll Forty-Six because her terrible children pester her to let them eat ice cream.
Panel 3: Now that they're at the counter of the Evil Make Elly Fat And Ugly And Old And Undesirable Store, Michael wants nut-fudge ripple and asks Lizzie what she's having.
Panel 4: Mike tells her that they've got peach, chocolate, orange, mint and almond only to get cut off by Elly insisting that Lizzie will have cherry.
Panel 5: Elly says that Lizzie will have cherry when Mike says that they also have lemon-marshmallow, fudge raisin and bubble-gum.
Panel 6: When the server tries to explain that they also have butter rum, grape, licorice and spumoni, Elly sticks to her guns about Lizzie having cherry. (It's at this point that the fact that Lizzie is wearing magenta overalls starts to hint at the punchline.)
Panel 7: When they leave, Mike asks why Lizzie had to have cherry.
Panel 8: Elly explains that she has to have something that matches her clothes.
Summary: It's also because Elly is too stupid to realize that there are options that don't involve Lizzie making a mess. Not, of course, that I'd offer them myself....I ain't getting MY head bitten off by a fractious psycho hose beast.