(Original Publication Date, 8 September 1991)
Panel 1: Elly braids Liz's hair and asks her what she thinks of her new look.
Panel 2: Elly looks gobsmacked when Liz does what she does and says that she'll wait for what her friends say first to tell her.
Panel 3: At the bus stop, Dawn likes the new look.
Panel 4: Next, another girl likes the braids. (This could be Nandini The Rarely Seen.)
Panel 5: Liz is starting to feel good because a teacher also praises her.
Panel 6: Conflict arises when a boy I call Mitch Peterson makes a cruel and crude remark about her having her hair in pork tails that has the desired result of gutting her. Boys like Mitch should be brutally killed so they don't pass on the idea of cruelty for its own sake.
Panel 7: Liz starts crying because she thinks that she's just heard the only honest person because that's what Daddy says about himself and Mike. (See desired course of action for John and Mike's kind above.)
Panel 8: She's in the girls' washroom taking braids out.
Panel 9: When she gets home, Elly whines that Liz looked so pretty so why did she take her braids out.
Panel 10: Since Elly forgot what 'everybody' meant when she was in sixth grade, she stands around looking like a gaffed trout when Liz says that everybody teased her.
Summary: Don't look so confused, Elly. That's you at that age and it's for the same sad, horrible and destructive reason: you look for a reason to feel like crud and were taught that being a flapping anus is a form of courtship.