Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for October 23, 2019

Nobody has played half a game with you.

The roots of Calvinball?

On a rainy day, I’d spot him 49.5 points, and let him go first. On a sunny day, I’d suddenly have yard work to do. On the theory that he wouldn’t follow me there, lest he get pressed into service.

♫ You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t play Gross Out with Calvin, … ♫

Sounds like a variation of “You know what’s grosser than that…?”

I’ll play: ASPARAGUS! Top that.

Few stomachs are that strong.

Just thinking; would Hobbes cough up a cotton wad?

Like Calvin, I pretty much had no trouble winning this game (though we only played until someone dropped out, often looking green). My trick was the ability to not picture what I was talking about. Plus, the school cafeteria gave me a lot of material to work with.

‘Course you know who’s going to win Hobbes. Calvin invented the game and no doubt has already appointed himself judge.;-D

Invented? No, Calvin, “What’s Grosser Than Gross?” has been around for a long, long time.

Ah the memories. Summer session at my university, and a lot of little kids stayed for a week or two in our dorm for “sports camps.” This led to the brats sitting at our table, saying “You know what that looks like? You know what that smells like?” ad definite nauseum. We cured the little monsters though. I was “parenting” a group of Mexican highschool students, also living in our dorm. Made up a jar of my famous jalapeños in vinegar because they missed em so much. We’d pass the jar down the table and each take some. Finally one of the brats asked for a taste which we gladly gave. He gasped, and handed the jar to his little pals. We got our peace, and our table, to ourselves again.

Playing “Gross Out” with Susie and winning a point is something you may regret, Calvin.

Funny! Hobbes is already admitting defeat!

So Calvin has been skulking around in the gutter again. Good thing it’s not Mom or Dad because you’d be in bed.

In this game, Calvin is both gross and net winner.

Peanut Butter and Mayonnaise. I win.

Didn’t Billy Crystal do something like that on SNL?

The verbal version of Calvinball.

grosses I ever got is when I was eating a hot snot sandwich and drinking a cold glass of puke……. and found a hair in it!!

Donnie Dump is president. I win.

I think this falls under the game category of ‘The only way to win is not to play.’

The pie eating scene from the movie Stand By Me.

My second grade teacher once"punished" two kids for being disgusting during lunch by making them stay in from recess and spend that time grossing each other out. Something tells me that it wasn’t much of a punishment. She had them start while we were lining up so we heard some of it. They were laughing and seemed to be having fun with it. The rest of us couldn’t help laughing either.

Sometimes you don’t have to go overboard either. Just describe food.

“Unborn chicken babies.”

“Dead cow muscle.”

“Vegetation sexual organs”

etc etc

Sack of Schiff

I’d better take the nicest word you can find!!

Suzie has played this game with Calvin several times, although unintentionally and against her will.

The last panel suggests Calvin told others about this game before he told Hobbes, his best friend.

These days Calvin would look for gross-out photos on the internet.

You may remember the lyrics differently:

Great green gobs of

Greasy grimy gopher guts,

Chopped up monkey butts,

Isolated chicken feet,

Two bloody eyeballs

Rolling, rolling down the street —

And I forgot my spoon!

Friends used to do this in college at the dining tables. I always won even though I wasn’t playing. Try emptying a horse’s water bucket with two bloated rats who died of rat poison in it before your breakfast or doing frog dissections just after lunch. You get a strong stomach. Later in life at mystery writing conventions, I was able to sit through slide presentations by medical examiners of autopsies of murder and accident victims. I still had it with a strong stomach.

I’ll just sit this one out and thanks for the invite.

Brussels sprouts!

My brother and his friend used to play that game. The grossest thing I saw him do was with a mushroom. We were eating pizza (my brother, his best friend, my best friend and me) at a restaurant when he put a mushroom up his nose. He made weird noises until all the patrons were looking at our table, blew the mushroom out of his nose, looked at it and then ate it. Yes, we were thrown out all the while laughing hysterically.

Calvin may have stumbled upon a career calling, because there’s actually a large body of research on the science of disgust. Here’s one popular mainstream introduction,

NOVA: What’s Behind the Disgust Response?

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/whats-behind-disgust-response/

Go felch a cat! :P