Farmer, wow. I'd never have known English wasn't your 1st language if you hadn't told on yourself. Forgive me if you're familiar with this term already, but celine is what's called an internet "troll" - someone who enjoys attention of any kind, the more negative the better. Trolls live to make inflammatory and outrageous statements, they're basically attention wh*ores, all too often they have a pet cause or an axe to grind and the outrageous statements are for real. You will see them make the same negative statements day after day, with more extreme inflammatory variations to excite other commenters. They don't want rational discussion, they want a place to rant, vent and condemn things, and sites like this are their only forum. Don't feed them - ignore them just like people in their real lives undoubtedly do. Regarding the strip, I'm interested to see what kind of relationship, if any, Gene has with Meg. Of coirse Mary Lou hasn't kept her under a rock, but has he been spending any real time with her during these visits, or just with her mother?
Okay, and why on earth did i keep saying "Janice" instead of "Janis"? It's not like I wasn't reading this strip for some years now ;-P Sorry for that ^^
I think Celinemread is reading (no pun intended) way too much into Mary Lou's motives. Mary Lou is just introducing her kid to Janice, and that's all there is to it. Maybe it's just me, but going out of one's way to think of selfish reasons for this strikes me as a somewhat negative attitude. After all, it's a known fact (for us as well as for Janice) that there exists this phenomenon called "Meg", so it's just the polite thing to introduce them to each other, ESPECIALLY since it's not a far-fetched possibility that Meg just MAY play a bigger role in Janice's son's life in the future. Celinemread, what would you have liked Mary Lou to do - hide Meg in the closet just so nobody may accuse her of "trying the child bribe"?
BTW, I'm not a native English speaker, so I have to beg for forgiveness in case there are any lapses in this regard somewhere in my post ;-)
Last I looked it took TWO people deciding get married to "bear [a child] in wedlock" but then these withholding selfish mothers have magic powers. Call me crazy, but I'd rather have a child on my own than be legally tied to someone who might be a crappy, resentful, and indifferent parent, who didn't love me or my child but was forecd into marriage for whatever reason. Yeah, pro forma shotgun marriage definitely says you care. Well, about appearances but not much else. Better no marriage at all than subject your kid (or you) to a prison sentence like that. Mary Lou turned to her family to help her provide for her child and raise her in a loving and secure environment, which is what a "caring parent" would do who loved their kid a lot, not "so little". Gus is also a "caring parent" who provided for, and helped, his own child - it's what some humans do.
