g d k

writing my 2nd CRW paper of the morning

“She did not talk to people as if they were strange hard shells she had to crack open to get inside. She talked as if she were already in the shell. In their very shell.”

“There comes a point where you just love someone. Not because they’re good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn’t mean you’ll be together forever. It doesn’t mean you won’t hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.”

“

I always identified with Calvin as a child (I suppose you could say I still do), and this strip pretty much sums up what being a kid like Calvin is like. Constantly feeling out of sync with the rest of the world, and thus retreating to the world you create for yourself in your mind. If you think about it, Calvin was really quite an anomaly in popular entertainment — not just in comics, but in anything, be it movies, TV, etc. He has no friends, and no extracurricular activities; the only people he ever sees are his parents, who he has a strained relationship with, and Moe, Susie, Rosalyn, and Miss Wormwood, all of whom he detests and all of whom detest him. The only person he ever has any real interaction with exists only in his head. He is, for all intents and purposes, completely alone. And he’s fine with that. The kind of kid most people would entirely ignore all through school is not generally the kind you make the star of your show, and yet the strip became hugely successful.

I know that people of all ages enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes, but I have to think that it meant even more to those of us who grew up with him. Going to school every day and seeing all the ways we didn’t fit in, it was nice to see someone like us, who was intelligent and independent, and didn’t need to be a smile-plastered Mouseketeer to enjoy life. Though numerous motivational posters and guidance councelors and after-school specials had said it again and again, it was Calvin who managed to truly express the idea—without being preachy, without being sappy, perhaps even without trying—that it was okay to be different.

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best — ” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”

“Let this leave me so something else can land.”

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”

“Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.”

“Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.”

“Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.”