When I was growing up, Calvin and Hobbes were some of my favorite book characters. Friends and I recited entire swaths of dialogue. We shared the books. I think we related on a fundamental level. We, too, loved to run around through the woods, crafting these elaborate pretend scenarios while our parents did whatever parents did, far away from us.
I'm absolutely delighted to be raising my own little Calvin now. Besides looking the part, he's appropriately defiant, unappreciative of his mother, and has an imaginary friend. His imaginary friend is his hand, which is a little creepier than a stuffed tiger, but Hand certainly pushes him towards mischief.
I find myself recalling Calvin and Hobbes quite frequently. I think of this strip whenever X jumps in a puddle, picks up a stick, throws rocks in the water, or some other inexplicable kid thing. I think of this one whenever I hear X reciting some elaborate imaginary scenario involving dinosaurs, cars, trains, sea creatures, and/or Hand.
I guess, more than anything, this is a testament to the brilliance of Bill Watterson, capturing childhood in all of it's frustrating and magical glory. I wish I still had the ability to conjure up an entire universe out of nothing but a few plastic toys. Adulthood can seem so dreary sometimes.
2 comments:
Hand isn't the weirdest/creepiest imaginary friend.You forget the "man" in the woods on our hike who was at first angry, then was happy. Man is in quotation marks because no one was there.
But hand has so many more possibilities, so I like that. A disembodied hand can do all sorts of things, so hand could easily be the thing that X blames when things don't go well. Maybe it is hand that puts the concrete column in the way at your parking garage, for instance. And I think hand was what bothered Napoleon when you guys were visiting.
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