Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for May 08, 2021

The thought of Calvin walking barefoot in the street gives me the creeps.

Dad says that he will meet you in the woodshed…..

That kid is a torment. I wonder how many people decided to NOT have kids after reading this strip…

In a world of hurt!

it’s awfully late to do prank phone calls, Calvin… so get your keister back in the house afore your parents call the cops on you to bring you home

I would be scared if I got that call.

You better hope he dosen’t know where you are, Calvin….

I pity the poor kids today, deprived of the convenience of pay phones.

What was even the point of this exercise, Calvin?

With Calvin every hour is good for provoking troubles to his parents.

Where did he get the (quarter?) for the phone?

When you get home you’ll wish you hadn’t woken Dad up, Calvin.

This is hilarious. Just imagine Dad’s face!

“Do you know where I am?” My answer: “If you’re not in home in bed, you’re on the bullet train to Hell when I get through with you…”

Calvin was discreet enough to make a rope out of bedsheets and avoid the stairs. That way he made sure dad was still in bed when he called.

These days that would be dangerous on so many levels!

Does anyone under the age of 40 get this joke?

I suppose some will recognize the device on which he is placing the call.

But how many know the significance of verbiage?

This is not one of Calvin’s finer moments.

I wonder how many pay phones are out there any longer? I live in an area with a lot of Amish and there used to be phone booths close to the clusters of farms. Now there are none and I honestly don’t recall the last time I saw a pay phone.

This is exactly how, and why, bars get put on windows and parents get arrested for child endangerment. Life is complicated.

HAHAHAHA!!!! Ok that’s funny.

Remember public pay phones? Public service announcements on TV?

Trouble?

where does Calvin get such bizarre ideas?

Dad going grey prematurely one prank at a time.

Calvin do you ever sleep at night?

“Why, yes, I do. You’re on the phone with me. See you in the morning, son!” (click)

the thought that he walked to a payphone makes it out worldly

Do payphones only two feet off the ground even exist?

The thought of Calvin finding a working pay phone-and having a dime, er, quarter, er, phone card gives ME the creeps.

“Well if you do, could you come get me, it’s getting cold out here.”

A reference that kids today would not get!

It’s 11:00 pm. Do you know where your cat is?

In this day and age, a ‘nice’ man may turn out to be something entirely different.

One of my all-time favorites

What is that thing?

What is that strange box he is using?

He was as funny at the beginner of the strip that he was later. Hilarious.

I can see why Calvin never made it past age 6.

Dad:(has heart failure)

“You’re either in your bed or about to be fondly remembering when you had a bed.”

For the benefit of the younger readers, having agencies and neighbors watching for an opportunity to call children’s services on parents is a modern outgrowth of the selfishness of ‘the ME generation’. ‘The pill’ and the ‘sexual revolution’ and the ‘if it feels good, do it’ promoted in the sixties+ resulted in broken homes (divorces with children), and the parent who didn’t get custody looking for a way to beat up the parent who did get custody after the former realized that (s)he missed the kid(s) and hated the way the former spouse’s new partner treated and taught the kids.

Of course, admitting this jealous and spiteful motive would get them nowhere, so they invented ‘for the children’ as a better-sounding excuse for insisting that action be taken against the former spouse. This was taken up by the media, since it had a public-spirited ring to it, never mind the purely selfish origin. The result was chaos, in which the media had people gleefully spying on everyone else to detect ‘inappropriate’ treatment of children. Laws were passed to make teachers and medical personnel responsible for reporting anything that could possibly be considered abuse of children, and the list of what counted as abuse was rapidly expanded.

As an example of this nonsense, one of our boys was attacked by other boys on the playground at school, and received a black eye under the unwatchful eyes of the teachers who were huddled together talking to each other at the time. Observing his black eye later, they wanted to know if it happened at home. When he told them it happened on their watch at school, they quickly lost interest.

As parents became more and more absorbed in their own selfish worlds, they had their kids spend more and more time in pre-and-post school activities. Anything to avoid ‘wasting’ their time on their own kids. Instead, they invented the concept of ‘quality time’ to explain the way they wooed their kids when they had them from the other parent.

A pay phone. When was the last time you saw one of those? Personally, I can’t remember when, although I don’t remember much anyway…

Nah, Calvin is too cheap to spend money on a pay phone.

Weird to see a time when Watterson would occasionally put contemporary pop culture into his comic strips.

For anyone confused by the strip, it’s referencing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_you_know_where_your_children_are%3F

When Calvin gets back, he is so grounded.

Seems a little dated today

I am frequently so blown away by Watterson’s diabolical mind!!! What kind of childhood, life experiences births these evil behaviors. LMAO!

No, but you will be in the dog house when I get my hands on you!