Everything I know I’ve learned from Calvin and Hobbes

It’s no mystery that kids say the darnedest things. In fact some kids are downright insightful. For many of us a good dose of this youthful insight came from the regular sunday morning comics of Calvin and Hobbes. The strip ran from 1985 until 1995 and featured Calvin, a philosophical, trouble-making six-year-old, and his his imaginary friend, a stuffed tiger named Hobbes.

You may have thought Calvin and his pal were just cute but they were actually dropping knowledge bombs on you. Thankfully Edd McCracken has summed up some of the best moments from the comic strip’s 10-year run in his blog post for Book Riot entitled, “Sixteen things Calvin and Hobbes said better than anyone else“.

You should go check out the full post but if you need convincing, here is one nugget of fictional six-year-old wisdom.

Calvin: Isn’t it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humour? When you think about it, it’s weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it’s funny. Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?

Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.

Calvin: (after a long pause) I can’t tell if that’s funny or really scary.

via: Bookriot image: Flickr / Josh Smith under Creative Commons

Calvin and Hobbes, Comic Strips, Knowledge Bombs, Nostalgia

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