Early last year, I had the enjoyable task of spending several hours in the company of Scarlett Johansson. I held it together. I didn’t request a photo together, or an autograph…or even a funny soundbite to use as my voicemail greeting. That being said, if I ever found myself in a room with Bill Watterson, I would probably start shrieking or sob uncontrollably or wrap the man—scared and bewildered—up in a hug so tight that security would forcibly remove me from the premises. I have every last Calvin & Hobbes book. Some date back nearly two decades and were purchased from elementary-school book fairs. I don’t read them very often, but I will never dump them in the thrift-store pile. They’re precious to me. When someone brings this much laughter into your life, this much delight, you show deference. So I will always keep my books close. Here are five of the things I love about Mr. Watterson’s famous strip.
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1. The Expressions
I’m not just talking about Calvin’s disgusted “blech!” face when he gets served something healthy and unidentifiable at the dinner table. I’m talking about Hobbes’s mile-wide grin when he gets a kiss from Susie Derkins. I’m talking about the the sour grimace on the babysitter’s face after enduring a night of Calvin’s hijinx. Watterson barely needed to provide dialogue.
2. Vocabulary
There’s nothing better than a six-year-old kid who ruminates on life using pentasyllabic words. Here’s to holding the funnies in one hand and a thesaurus in the other. Guess that’s what you get when you have a comic strip named after a theologian and a British philosopher.