(Strip Number 4153, Original Publication Date, 25 March 1982)
Panel 1: We find ourselves in Mrs Hardacre's class watching Deanna hand Mike a pencil; as she does so, Mrs H tells them that they're staying after school.
Panel 2: Dee explains that he was simply borrowing a pencil.
Panel 3: As a red-haired boy with freckles giggles behind his sleeves, Mrs Hardacre's face is a mask of more or less blind rage as she points at a scared-out-his-mind Mike and snippily bellows "You are required to have two pencils at all times; where are they?"
Panel 4: Bulgy-eyed and terrified Mike holds up the nubs of his pencils and says that the pencil sharpener keeps eating them.
Summary: The problem with strips like this is that we inevitably end up watching Elly telling Mike to respect teachers she would have regarded as a mortal enemy. Granted, I don't much care for the teachers Mike ends up with but their lives would be easier, incompetent though they may be, if they weren't stuck dealing with the end result of the domestic failure that we call Elly's parenting technique.