Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for July 01, 2024

All in the Family…..

Think it through, guys. You really want to eat while listening to Calvin go on and on?

Calvin’s family is pretty sitcomy if you ask me.

Wait 20 years and buy the DVD set.

This is why people had TV’s in the kitchen/dining room for.

He asked POLITELY, you’d think they’d take that into consideration. But NO, they are turning it into a lecture. :P

The first three stages of grief pictured above…, Denial, anger and bargaining. Depression and acceptance, I guess, are right around the corner.

It’s possible Calvin is on the spectrum and he likes the routine of watching the show more than the show itself.

“If you do not stop complaining, you will forfeit your dessert and your TV program for a week. Do you understand?”

belch⠄⠄⠄

pick your nose⠄⠄⠄

sing⠄⠄⠄

you’ll be excused

Start a discussion about the fascinating appearance of squashed bug guts, and see how they suddenly want to spend less time together.

Cheer up, Calvin. In 2024 we spend more time looking for something decent to watch on a half dozen streaming channels than we actually do watching something decent. Ref last evening at The Count’s abode…

Mom tried. No deal. Dad’s got the idea, but their food is getting cold fast. He won’t stay the course.

My Mom used to say when I was acting up: ’Wait until your Father gets home."

Calvin may learn a discomfiting lesson if dad disciplines him.

All he has to do is bring up the things he talks about in the school cafeteria and they will excuse him.

Of course, Calvin would more be into dysfunctional family sitcoms like “Mama’s Family”, “Married… With Children”, “Roseanne” and “The Simpsons”. He would not be a fan of sitcoms like “Full House” and “Step By Step”.

Comcast was terrible. They kept raising the price for cable while removing channels I was watching

Sorry that I haven’t commented today. I am perfectly well but don’t have any particular comments to make on this strip which haven’t already been made.

I recall having to sit and listen to the boring retake of my parents days at work. VERY boring. When the boys were young I would let them leave, much to their mothers consternation, until she realized we could have a quiet conversation without interruptions. They did not leave the house and knew they had a chore to do after we finished. That is when they realized there was dessert and they missed out.

This why we eat in front of the TV!

Sorry, but if it’s Star Trek on TV, then…

You don’t have to listen to him be so disrespectful just a nice firm smack on the butt and to your room does the trick and gets rid of the noise.

I’d rather do sit time at the supper table instead of tv, I miss those days.

At my grandmother’s house (who believed that children should be seen, but not heard), we could ask to be excused when we were done. My little sister, who was just learning to speak, would say “My big shoes.”

I can’t even imagine what would have happened to me if I said, “This stuff is awful” about a meal my mother had cooked. Even if I thought it, I certainly knew enough not to say it out loud.

Dennis the Menace time.

We didn’t have a TV when I was Calvin’s age. We did have radio, but Mom usually had that tuned to a baseball game.

this kind of forced social interaction hurts the family in the long run, since the kid learns to associate family time with punishment, tedium, and festering resentment

Those were the days when if you missed your program on TV you were out of luck. No DVRs, DVDs, On Demand, VHS tapes, or replays at a different time, and if it was a hit series you might have to wait up to seven years before there was even a rerun.

When i was growing up we all spent dinner together at the table and talked about our day and any problems that arose, nobody wanted to rush off to watch tv because we ate before primetime shows started. When I got married I tried to keep the tradition going and it worked pretty good for the most part, had to add no cell phones at dinner table unless my then husband was on call for work and had to have phone very handy. Then the last place we lived at my sister’s bedroom was downstairs ( she moved in with us about 10 years into our marriage when my parents separated and Mom went to Alaska and my sister didn’t want to go with her so she asked to move in with us) and we had our bedroom, office, tv room and bathrooms upstairs but I tried to keep the eating together going and it worked for about 6 months then my sister couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just eat in her bedroom and watch tv or be on her computer, but I convinced her to give it a try but her and my then husband weren’t really getting along by then so she would interrupt when he was talking to start a conversation to bug him and he would start an argument with her to make her mad that she finally said she was eating in her room because he was ruining her meal. Then it was just him and I at the table and after a couple of weeks of that he said he was taking his dinner upstairs every evening and we could watch tv and get caught up with recordings on DVR. I just gave in to both because it wasn’t worth arguing with them about it. The last couple of years of our marriage we really started having problems and he used the watching tv excuse as a way to get out of having a conversation with me and the last 3 months before he walked out on me we were hardly talking so by then it didn’t matter. Now that I live alone I just eat at my computer desk because I don’t like to eat alone not doing anything. I do miss the family time at dinner table that had growing up.