Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for April 21, 2020

Those retirement plans never work out.

They actually think Calvin will support them one day?

When I used to play soccer at roughly Calvin’s age, I remember sitting at the bench until a ball was unexpected hurled into my gut. In the crying pain, I said I never wanted to play soccer again.

“All my character”? I’m guessing.

Maybe Hobbes will.

Spaceman Spiff is so disappointed in his Dr Jekyll.

Poor Calvin . . I think that must be the primary reason I never took up baseball.

What kind of character drips out your nose? The mind boggles.

A short story: Back when I was 4, maybe 5, years-old, some neighbor kids were pitching horseshoes in their backyard and I was hanging around. I took a notion to run and fetch their horseshoes back for them and ran to the pit. One of the kids pitching the shoes threw one in my direction way high just for the heck of it. It caught, however, on an overhead branch and came down nailing me square on the back on my head. Knocked me out for a few seconds.

Bleeding profusely from the cut, I ran home, maybe a hundred yards away. I ran into the kitchen where my father was doing dishes or something. When he saw me, he pulled my tee shirt off and picked me up bodily and held me under the faucet in the sink to wash off all the blood and assess the damage. Dad decided to take me into town and have the local doc put a couple of stitches in.

As fate would have it, my mother was visiting another neighbor when this all happened. While my father and I were in town getting me patched, Mom came home to find my blood-soaked tee shirt hanging over a chair. Neither me nor my father were anywhere to be found, nor any indication as to what had happened. Needless to say…

To this day, some people think that horseshoe is still having an effect.

I guess Calvin didn’t see that coming.

I love this kid.

Baseball, no…but maybe if Calvinball becomes a paid sport…

Calvin went on to become a famous activist against blood sports? :D

Poor boy, that’s not your “charagder dribig” out, those are your brains cells.

Well, if “all by garigder is drippig out by dose” is true, the nose bleed won’t last long, will it.

Right. Baseball builds character.

All the character Calvin has built comes crashing down!

When my kid was old enough, we signed him up for basketball. The first drill was, form two lines. Kid one passes across to kid two who passes across to kid three who… all went well until they got to my distracted kid who took it squarely on the head and that was the end of our basketball experience.

Sometimes I think that Dad deserves a good smack.

Injury never stopped my son from playing sports. More than once he was taken home by the coach who said to my wife, “You’re the nurse, you know what to look for.” We’ve also had to ask questions like, “Whose blood is this on you uniform: yours, a teammate or the opposition.”

When he was 9, he broke his leg playing soccer. Several weeks later he broke the cast playing soccer. He broke his leg on Halloween and got the cast off the day after Christmas, jumped on his new bike and rode off as if it had never been injured.

Broken noses didn’t count and he has about as many stitches as a baseball.

One time when he was in college and playing rugby (it was a club not a team) – we got a call from the coach. “I’m afraid your son got a bit of a concussion. We were playing a rather rough bunch.”

“Who?”

“The State Penitentiary. — I decided to sit him out the next two games.”

“How many games are left in the season?”

“One.”

My wife and I kept an insurance policy on him until he got married.

That’s okay Calvin. The world needs Left Fielders too.

Calvin is a fish?

Hey Calvin, if Dad is trying to gill you he doesn’t need baseball. Many other chances present themselves.

I love that line – “all my character is dripping out my nose”! ;-)

when my younger brother was in boy scouts, my mom asked me to pick him up one night. They met in the hall under a church and when I got there they were running around screaming, as kids will do. Then one scout got an elbow in the nose and blood was streaming out, made worse by the fact he bent at the waist to the wound was lower than his heart- a neat trick with a head wound.

since the adults weren’t doing anything I was the one who walked over, took the kid into the kitchen area and did first aid on him. While fielding dumb questions. “no it doesn’t look broken, you just got a bad hit.” “No he’s not bleeding to death , go get a mop.”

The adults running the show never asked who I was, how was the kid or what was I doing.

You notice dad tried to distance himself from having thrown the ball. “A grounder bounced up…”, not “I threw a grounder…”

I don’t plan to make it to old age.

LOL, “badeball!” But it’s not a good idea to hold your head back when you have a nosebleed! You should instead follow Footloose of G.I. Joe’s instructions here…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW8-ROpXpLk

Don’t till your head back! That just makes the blood run down your throat and you’ll throw up!

Dad’s genetics are never meant to produce athletes

Charadger?? Character?

Calvin will be living in their basement when he’s forty years old.

Another chance for Calvin drama-maybe he’ll be an actor.

But you can probably have a million dollar cartoon kid support you; even 25 years after you quite drawing him!

When he becomes an adult he will invent a time machine box to take him back to his childhood.

I like how Calvin talks here. Reminds me of “Order of the Phoenix” after Neville gets his nose broken. (Still, a total ouch moment for me!)

But calvin is already a billionaire kid entertaining a big gamut of people round the world. I wonder how much does Bill take for each fortnight?

I love Calvin’s dialogue in this strip.