Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for July 21, 2019

I bet Mom and Dad were wishing the lake would catch fire.

No, Calvin, you ’re not heading back home with your parents, but rather your parents are going home and letting you stay at the lake.

Well at least they had family togetherness and the sharing of special moments that Dad wanted!

I’ll never forget the time I saw a portable TV that had a hookup to the car’s cigarrette lighter so it could run off the battery if you were camping. Nowadays of course cars don’t have cigarette lighters.

I’ll bet Calvin would stop if he saw a shark.

Time flies when you’re having fun, Calvin.

That’s enough character building for one day.

This is a perfect follow-up to last week’s camping story arc. As usual, Dad is the one who suffers Calvin’s verbal wrath.

To paraphrase John Paul Jones, I have not yet begun to gripe!!!

duhhhhhh calvin and youre thetheyre leaving!! too bad they cant just leaveYOU!!If Iwould have thrown a fit like you it would be a loooong time before I coul sit down!!!!

Strangely enough….yeah..

None of us wonder why they only had one child.

Not only are we leaving, Calvin, but we’re never coming back here again!

“Whose, that son on the beach?”

“Well, we are. You’re welcome to stay if you want.”

I agree with Calvin, except for the last panel.

When I was a kid I loved going to the beach. Riding the waves, getting up early to look for shells. It was fun. Adult me is more like child Calvin now.

my pickup has a 120v ac outlet good for tv, dvd, phone chargers ect.

Boy does this bring back a lot of (bad) memories! Thank goodness they grow out of all that!

are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet………………………………….

Pick him up and dunk him into the freezing lake.

Calvin is the only kid who doesn’t like a day at the beach.

We used to go to the Jersey shore one week a year. In the day, our Moms would take we children to the beach and the Dads would go golfing. There must have been some around somewhere, but I never recall seeing a beach umbrella.

I guess if you don’t like something and complain enough for long enough people will change it just to shut you up. You win. Right?

My nephew will complain that the water is too wet and the sky is too blue

We lived close to the Ocean, at day’s end, they had to gaff me, to get me out of the water.—“It was a halcyon day, and as they neared the shore and the salt breezes scurried by, he began to picture the ocean and long, level stretches of sand and red roofs over blue sea.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nothing like some whine on the beach.

I read Dad’s line in the title panel and I go “Poor naive little soul…”

Beaches are overrated.

I’m with Calvin. Why go to the beach for hot sun, sit under an umbrella and read a book?

“Yes, we are, Calvin. YOU are staying, but WE are going!”

I love Calvin’s facial expressions!

Okay…I was with Calvin on the camping thing…but he can’t – or just stubbornly won’t – enjoy a day at the lake?! Both Calvin and Dad need to learn the art of compromise.

Are you kidding, I loved the beach when I was a kid. Big time fun!

This sums up what it’s like to have a kid (although, there should be some sort of sticky mess involved for accuracy’s sake).

No, we’re not going already. We are, if you can understand, but you’re not.

They should have buried him up to his neck in the sand, parked the sun umbrella over him, and moved out of earshot.

where’s Hobbes? figured he’d love to bury Calvin in the sand :)

Our family went to Leamington, Ontario, Lake Erie for summer vacation at our uncle’s cottage for many years. My brother and I would build sand castles, swim and play in the lake, play horseshoes, play games with pocket knives (mumbledy peg?), caddy for our uncles, hunt night crawlers, pour tons of calamine lotion on our mosquito bites, fly kites, cast for fish, heave truck inner-tubes at each other and friends, build a fire and cook hot dogs, throw the football around, play croquet, shag fly balls hit by our dad, row or steer the outboard motor while dad and uncle trolled for pickerel and catfish, build fires on the beach and have hot dogs and s’mores, play euchre with the grown-ups, get great suntans…and since we lived in the inner city in Detroit, this was almost all of our summer fun. Calvin is fictional, and is greatly exaggerated in stubbornness and intelligence to show how young boys are when seen through a magnifying glass.

Everybody of every age either knows/knew a kid just like that, or was one. That’s the beauty of Watterson’s art as always.

I agree with Calvin 100% except for the last panel.. “We’re finally leaving!? Thank God it took you long enough to realise this place sucks!”

The Walrus and The CarpenterLewis Carroll(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)The beach would be a great place to visit if it wasn’t for all the sand.

They should send the little brat to China to work for Apple!

Generally speaking, Calvin is generally speaking. Loudly.

Reminds me of an old joke. There was a novice who joined a monastery that was very strict about their vows of silence. Other than prayer and chants, the monks were only allowed to say two words every year, to their superior during a yearly review.

After the first year, the superior asks the monk if he has anything he’d like to say. The young monk replies, “Bed hard.”

The second year, when the superior asks him how things are going, he replies, “Food cold.”

The third year, before the rector can even get his words out, the monk tells him, “I quit.”

The rector replies, “Well, I’m not surprised. You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here.”

No, Calvin. Mom and Dad are trying to determine how many rocks they can include when the bundle you in the blanket, tie it off, then dump it in the ocean.

Nobody would match Calvin in whining. I love you dear!

I can remember my father getting a Hallicrafter shortwave radio when I was around 10-11. I would strap on the headphones and tune the dial till I heard what I assume was Morse Code. No idea what the dits and dahs were but I had an imagination that reached way out there. One time I would imagine it to be a telegraph operator sending messages to the next town during the Cowboy and Indian days. Another time I would hear messages going back and forth between ships out at sea. And eventually someone on Earth sending messages to base on the moon. There was no limit to my wild imagination. Honestly I still wonder what kind of messages, if thats what they really were, I was hearing.

We can count on Calvin to end the fun at the lake.