Calvin: The Only Honest Child in Comics
Even for me, one of the most
jaded, humanity-hating misanthropes who ever lived, Calvin is the only entity ever to bring me to tears with memories. Except that night a drunken baboon savagely and repeatedly punched me in the
groin. Calvin, the epitome of every little boy who ever got
left out of the schoolyard games, has been my role-model since time immemorial. His stubborn refusal to submit to the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune brought me through many dark and miserable nights as a high-school outcast, and still provides me with a shining icon of how to live: never give up, never surrender.
Calvin became a part of my life, the only gift my
evil aunt ever gave me, at an early age, and continues to be so to this day. His flights of fancy shaped my own, and that little voice in the back of my head that tells me that I all I really need is me sounds suspiciously like
Hobbes. I still find great pleasure in using Calvin's words as my own, whether to my own
Moes or to my Philosophy prof.
Now that I'm past high-school and into college and philosophy and filmmaking, Calvin has taken on a new kind of role in my life. He is almost a muse now, reminding me that inspiration is never farther away than your own imagination. (It must be admitted that one of my in-progress screenplays
With Apologies To Bill is a shameless "tribute" to
Tracer Bullet.)
I have come to the opinion that children should be introduced to the wonderful world of reading and language not with mindless "
See Spot Run", but with the endless joy of
Calvin and Hobbes, and that, perhaps, ever adult should be reminded of what childhood really was, a time of pain, joy, discovery and imagination.
Note: This is node is written as part of We Could Be Heroes: tes's Everything2 Heroes Quest