(Strip Number 138, Original Publication Date, 24 June 1981)
Panel 1: We start today's proceedings in Mike's classroom; we see him with a hangdog expression on his face as he apologizes to Miss Campbell for being the baddest kid in class. She's baffled by this statement and by the sentiment; she shouldn't be all that confused by the former. She should know Elly Patterson well enough by now to immediately realize that Mike probably received an angry lecture about how he should march down to that school and tell his teacher he was sorry for being a
Panel 2: Miss Campbell, who never appears again after this and can thus afford to be nice, tells him "You weren't bad; without you, it would have been a pretty dull year and I'm going to miss you."
Panel 3: As she hugs him, he smiles and thought-bubbles that that's the best 'sorry' he ever said. I agree; this time, he doesn't get yelled at or accused of faking being sorry to make Mommy feel bad about being a self-absorbed idiot bitch on wheels.
Summary: As I said at the top of the header, we're clearly meant to believe that Mike is lying about being sorry so he can troll for sympathy because that's what Lynn seems to believe what children do. The problem is that we do really inconvenient things called 'remembering the past' and 'drawing logical conclusions'; because we do that, we tend to believe something that Lynn would rather we not do: we tend to think that we're dealing with an average little boy feeling remorse for the natural act of seeking the attention his worthless parents deny him.
