When you open a “Calvin and Hobbes” comic collection, the air around you explodes with homicidal stuffed tigers and death-defying sled crashes. Spaceman Spiff soars through a black canvas cracked with stars, and Mom is always there to push you out the front door on a frigid Monday morning. “G.R.O.S.S.” is the name of the game, and the great beloved outdoors is prettier and brighter than it’s ever been. To read “Calvin and Hobbes” is to be a kid again, to see the big world brimming with endless possibility and to know that as long as you and your tiger best friend make it home at the end of the day — where mandatory bathtime is your greatest nemesis — life is good and kind and full.
My big brother is and always will be five years older than me. The gap between a newborn and a five year old is virtually insurmountable. Even the difference between 19 and 24 is significant. But every year we get older, the gap shrinks a little. When we’re 52 and 57, we’ll be just the same: old.
Anyway, when I was little, I adored my older brother. I wanted to be just like him. I remember seeing him read all these different chapter books and thinking, “I can’t wait to read.” When I saw him reading “Calvin and Hobbes” comic books, it was only natural that I ended up there too.
There were a lot of big words that I didn’t understand. Calvin gives quite a few philosophical soliloquies every now and then. But I got the gist of it — Calvin is a funny 5-year-old rascal that you can’t help but adore. Hobbes is his loyal, true best friend. Nevermind that he’s actually a stuffed tiger that only comes alive when other characters aren’t around, Hobbes is very much real. My brother named our cat Hobbes. He had the name picked out before they left for the Humane Society.
I think the magic of “Calvin and Hobbes” lies in its ability to marvelously capture the sacred essence of childhood. All Calvin cares about are those warm summer days where he and Hobbes tramp out to the middle of the woods and go soaring past the trees and rocks and brooks on their rickety old sled that has yet to get them killed, despite their best efforts. Calvin hates school, never does his homework, abhors baths and loves to hate his neighbor Susie. He’s incredibly simple in his likes and dislikes, and he’s actually quite industrious in his play. He establishes his own club called G.R.O.S.S. — “Get Rid Of Slimy girlS” — and occasionally sets up his own booth to charge people money for his advice (shockingly, no one pays him). There are very few significant characters in Calvin’s world, and it seems to exemplify the way that, when you’re a kid, the world is simultaneously so big and so small. Calvin has the time and space to consider such big questions about life, but he also has a very clear sense of immediacy and has no anxiety or concerns about the future. He’s careless in all the perfect, childhood ways.
When I read “Calvin and Hobbes,” it takes me back to those warm summer days when I had nothing to do but everything in the world to gain. My brother and I would go out into the backyard and dig up earthworms to feed to our pet quails. We’d capture roly-polies and stash them in plastic bowls covered with Saran Wrap until they died. During those long adventure days, my friends and I would turn a giant green round loveseat on its side and cover it with a blanket. One of us would crawl into the loveseat while the rest of us would roll it back and forth across the living room, laughing hysterically as we flung our friend around the room. It was our very own homemade roller coaster. Those days were simple, beautiful and kind. Nothing in the world mattered, and we were happy.
After I moved to Michigan for college, I started giving away my “Calvin and Hobbes” books to a few family friends in the area. They have little boys in elementary school who would probably get a kick out of all the rough-and-tumble craziness that Calvin gets into. I’m growing up now, and I’m a little too busy for comics these days. The pages are worn and wrinkled, with a few food stains here and there from when my brother and I would snack on ice cream and crackers while reading on the floor. But even as I gave away these relics of a time bathed in golden sunlight and happy laughter, I kept one for myself. It sits on the shelf right above my desk — and every couple of months, I pull it down from the shelf, snuggle in a blanket, find a good page and smile.
Daily Arts Writer Pauline Kim can be reached at kpauline@umich.edu.