(Strip Number 5074, Original Publication Date, 6 January 1989)
Panel 1: As they drive home from their day's outing (because Lynn forgot that both of them have jobs again), Elly makes me laugh my head off when she says that she never thought that she'd feel "old." This is because I remember that she'd spent most of the last decade wailing that her life was all used up because she was in her thirties.
Panel 2: She then compounds her silliness by saying that she feels like part of a lost generation when Mike talks about computers, fax machines and other intimidating devices she fears understanding. This is why I made that noise yesterday about how Elly never thinks that a new age has room for her in it.
Panel 3: Connie changes the subject by telling her that she knows how she feels. She then worsens things by telling her to walk past a construction site one day when everyone is whistling in appreciation.
Panel 4: Connie then makes a bad situation worse by telling Elly to imagine realizing that they're whistling at your daughter instead of her. What a great friend Connie is to give Elly something else to fear! As it is, she already fears that her twelve year old son will get some girl pregnant (thanks to Connie's inept handling of the Dirk Dagger problem) and now thanks to Connie, she fears Liz becoming a baby mama.
Summary: It doesn't take much to turn Elly's fear of being useless into her fear that her life has gone by before she could actually get to live it. I blame both things on settling down and having kids too damned early in life. Mike might have tried to do a lot of victim-blaming when he says that if Elly had finished her schooling, she could have become something more than a harried mess living in the past but he does have a point.