(Strip Number 6732, Original Publication Date, 11 September 1988)
Panel 1: We find Elly taking a load of clothes out of the dryer.
Panel 2: Rather than put it in a basket, she carries the hot load of clothes to a near-by table.
Panel 3: Given that this strip is targeted mostly at angry mothers who hate the fact that some anti-social, evil and conflict-causing MAN made it illegal to bust their children's heads in with a tire iron for leaving the cap off of the toothpaste, it doesn't take a genius to tell what the strip will be about when we see Elly making a meal of folding the clothes.
Panel 4: This suspicion of mine that Lynn is going to boast about publicly shaming her children again is confirmed when Dim Michael and Learning-Impaired Lizzie make the scene.
Panel 5: I break Lynn's heart and ruin life for her by predicting that things will not end well when Lizzie says that she needs her blue T-shirt and just plain grabs it out of the pile.
Panel 6: Mike declares that he needs his track pants and also disrupts the pile.
Panel 7: When Elly returns to the laundry room, she stands there slack-jawed in horror because her neatly folded pile isn't either of those things. (Meanwhile, Paul J destroys Elly's freedom of expression by asking "Why the Hell doesn't she do what his mother did and flat out TELL her children not to look for articles of clothing they want until AFTER she puts the laundry away so she can avoid this sort of thing?")
Panel 8: She astonishes Michael by angrily flinging Lizzie's clothes on her bed in a heap.
Panel 9: Since he's sort of dumb, he's honestly confused when he asks what's wrong with Mom 'cause she always usta fold the laundry.
Summary: He'll find out when he gets an angry lecture about how they just treat her like a maid and they NEVER appreciate her and they just take and take and take and never give and wow, Mike never noticed that the veins on her neck stand out like stalks of celery when she delivered her daily noisily angry lecture about how she's supposed to be a SLAVE suffering in SILENCE before! Is that ever weird or WHAT?!
