Whenever we went over a vocabulary list in AP Lit and Comp, I found to my surprise that I had known most of the words as long as I could remember. Even going all the way back to elementary school, I had an impressive vocabulary. By the age of four, I knew what the phrase “avant-garde” meant. I could use terms like “integrity,” “altruism,” and “homicidal psychosis” in my everyday speech. I won’t claim that I knew the exact definition or implication of them at the time, but boy, were they fun to say! Many people asked my parents what technique they were using to teach me. They simply replied "We gave him comic books".
The comic series Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, is what initiated my fascination for the English language. Even today, I flip through them and find insightful snippets of conversation like “people ask why we tolerate a popular culture that celebrates violence and depravity.” But of course, at that age, the biting social commentary is what attracted me. The reason Calvin and Hobbes got me interested in reading and learning is that Watterson made the style of his comics lighthearted and simple while still using adult vocabulary. Often the punchline of his jokes would contain a large word that I was unfamiliar with, meaning I often missed the whole point of the strip. But missing the meaning of a comic strip was a totally different thing to me than missing the point of a reading lesson. The comic was a joke! It was supposed to be funny! I knew I was missing out on something. So, I would run over to my parents to ask them what it meant. It was Calvin and Hobbes that got me to start asking questions, and as time went on my reading comprehension grew. What started with Calvin and Hobbes moved on to other things. By the time I was five, I was reading my first novels. When I was eight, I was writing my own stories. By that time, I already knew I wanted to be an author.
Another reason I took so well to Calvin and Hobbes was because I strongly related to the protagonist. He was, after all, a hyperactive, overly imaginative six-year-old boy. In the strip, Calvin is often depicted struggling against rules and authority, such as his parents or his teacher. However, we can clearly see that these are not unreasonable people. His teacher just wants him to sit quietly in class and pay attention, and his parents simply want him to obey the rules of a stable household. There is nothing extraordinarily strict about the environment. Calvin is the extraordinary one. The order of a classroom constricts and suffocates his unique creative ability. Conventional systems do not work for unconventional people like Calvin, or me.
I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder at a very young age, so I could understand Calvin’s difficulty paying attention in class. I was fidgety, outspoken, and often more interested in the book I was hiding under my desk than whatever lesson was being taught. I was frequently in trouble and was prone to throwing tantrums. I felt driven, compelled to the very core of my being, to think about what I wanted to think about, to read my books rather than pay attention in class, to get up and run around rather than sit and be still. What Calvin and Hobbes helped to teach me was that these basic inclinations of mine, while they were not viewed well by those around me, did not make me into a bad person.
Calvin’s nature is fantastically creative and imaginative, but also intensely destructive. He constructs small, intricate towns in his sandbox only to destroy them, includes items such as napalm, missile launchers, and atom bombs on his Christmas list, and fantasize about dinosaurs coming back to life, slaughtering humanity, and ruling earth once again. However, this is not because he is inherently malicious towards others. It is because his desire for creativity and individuality is so potent that the only way he feels he can express it is through simulating the destruction of everything preconceived, everything conventional. It is this idea that I believe is pivotal to Watterson’s message, an idea that is rarely contemplated in today’s society or at least rarely seen in a positive light, the idea that creativity, expression, and innovation should not be obstructed by the preservation of the precedent.
I think now that this is a key element in a child’s mind, the desire to learn and grow, and the desire to bring about change, it’s a part of evolution. We are born knowing that the old must make way for the new, that rules are made to be broken. In any case, Bill Watterson certainly understood a child’s mind, and that fact was both a comfort and an inspiration to me. I feel without a doubt that I owe my curiosity, my intelligence and my creativity to that little boy and his stuffed tiger.
