The realities of life...as in the words (and sketches) of Bill Watterson

Almost each one of us who has ever been a kid has always been a comics lover. And almost every comic lover has read the brilliant work of antics by Bill Watterson. The Reuben Award winner who gave us the comic strip called - "Calvin and Hobbes".

There are few wellsprings of humor more consistently reliable than the mind of a child. Most cartoonists, being childlike, recognize this, but when they set out to capture the hurly - burly of the very young, they almost always cheat, shamelessly creating not recognisable children, but highly annoying, wisecracking, miniature adults. Chalk it up to either indolence or defective recall, but most people who write comic dialogue for minors (up to and including the perpetrators of Cosby kids) demonstrate surprisingly little feel for - or faith in - the original source material , that is, childhood, in all its unfettered and winsome glory.



It is in this respect that Bill Watterson has proved as unusual as his feckless creations, Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson is the reporter who's gotten it right; childhood as it actually is, with its constantly shifting frames of reference. Anyone who's done time with a small child knows that reality can be alarmingly situational. The utterance which an adult knows to be a "lie" may well reflect a child's deepest conviction, at least at the moment it pops out.



Fantasy is so accessible, and it is joined with such force and frequency, that resentful parents like Calvin's assume they are being manipulated, when the truth is far more frightening, they dont even exist. The child is both king and keeper of this realm, and he can be very choosey about the company he keeps.

Of course, this exclusivity only provokes many grown ups into trying to regain the serendipity of youth for themselves, to, in effect retrieve the irretrievable. A desperate few do things that land them in the Betty Ford Centre (A Drug Treatment Centre).

The rest of us, more sensibly read Calvin and Hobbes.

While going through this strip, one can very well connect their own childhood with that of the little mascot of innocence, the little boy being Calvin.