Perspective: The power of imagination, and other parenting lessons from Calvin and Hobbes
By Molly Pascal April 4 at 9:04 AM My then-7-year-old son hurried into snow pants as he eyed the somersaulting flakes outside the window. “Are you going to build a snowman?” I asked him skeptically. Though only a couple of inches covered the ground, I knew from experience that scant accumulation was no obstacle to a determined child.
One day recently we had found a stack of Calvin & Hobbes books in the “free” bin outside the local library. It had been years since I had read the books. I couldn’t recall specific story lines, but I remembered the strip as one that reliably made me laugh. I grabbed the entire stack, chuckling at the ingenuity of the titles as I slid them into a cloth bag. “The Revenge of the Baby-Sat.” “Something Under the Bed is Drooling.” “Weirdos from Another Planet.
Otis spent days fiddling with string and boxes, constructing and rigging booby traps. He suspended one, a cardboard box filled with confetti, from the roof of the front porch, and laid in wait for someone to ring the bell. The contraption misfired, but I was so impressed with Otis’s industry, I left it hanging. Then it was on to the next prank. Unbeknown to me, he had been sneaking around after bedtime, placing bubble wrap in strategic locations.
One day, I asked Otis what he thought of Hobbes. “What do you believe? Is he real or is he stuffed?” In a tone that connoted my knucklehead status, my son answered, “He’s a real tiger, but for some reason grown-ups think he’s a stuffed animal. I guess they just don’t know any better.”
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