Take Your Daughter To Work
A Note From Karen
LUANN launched in 1985, shortly before my 6th birthday. My dad worked from home and it seemed completely normal to me that he sat at a drawing board - sometimes I'd pull up a chair next to him and color Sunday comics with special colored pencils. The idea of "take your daughter to work day" didn't apply because, unless he was doing something else, dad was always at work and I didn't have to go anywhere to be there with him.
I look back now and realize how lucky I was to have a parent at home, always. Lots of kids growing up in the 80s and 90s were "latchkey kids" who spent hours home alone or watching their siblings until both parents got home from work. It was really a special situation to have my dad at home.
But there was a downside: Girl Scout cookie season. My mom was the troop leader and organized sales at grocery stores and local soccer games so every girl in our troop could participate. However, most girls had a superpower sales technique: send the order form to work with mom or dad (or both) and voila - sales goals achieved! Not me. I was at every grocery store and soccer game AND walked the steep hills of my neighborhood to hit my sales goals.
When the cookie boxes arrived and needed to be delivered to customers, I was full of self-pity: my peers handed boxes of cookies to their parents to be dealt with at work while I dragged my American Flyer wagon up and down to all the neighbor's houses. Oh, poor me!
Now, of course, I get to work with my dad. It's wild to me that the idea never crossed any of our minds until I was well into a career as an educator. Life takes surprising turns, sometimes! Speaking of which, the final strip for this "Take Your Daughter To Work" storyline is below and something you'll likely never see now that I work with my dad (and LUANN has become so much more complex and realistic than it was 30+ years ago): a storyline that just drops mid-week and finishes with a random dog joke 😉
