Based on that poem Dad should either start believing in Hobbes or start believing his son is an intellectual prodigy. Some how I think from his point of view believing in Hobbes might be easier ;)
Welcome back to the land of the slightly healthy Marg :)
Dad´s expression of puzzlement in the second panel says he realizes it was his son, not Hobbes, who wrote it, yet he cannot believe his son is capable of such well accomplished writing.
Since Hobbs is lying there filled with fluff and stuff it is obvious that Calvin is the ghost writer of An Ode to Tigers. Pretty imaginative and the vocabulary isn’t bad for a 6 year old either.
Who among us could believe that Calvin could come
up with such an ode to his sidekick considering Calvin’s
hatred of school and learning. What child at Calvin/s age
knows about ‘haute couture and compares it with
camoflage?
Calvin does learn. He is driven by his own agenda and his own thirst for knowledge. Ironically it’s school that slows him down. It’s the monotony and the filling worksheets mentality of school. This type of learning is not inspiring. You are taught facts and how to regurgitate. I’ve seen worksheets for everything including nature studies and science! My best learning came in University and on my own. I slept through many, many years of school before that.
Does this kid have ADHD? I have seen him produce reams of stuff on other subjects of his interest before. He is no more a normal six year old than I am…
No, khpage he’s just a normal INFP male. Quite rare (about 2%), they find ways to amuse themselves, and need to, since most “average” masculine pastimes–like sports–are not very interesting to them. Instead, they plunge deeply into what does interest them, and produce large quantities of, as you say, “stuff” on often erudite, often age-inappropriate matters. (Not that they are particularly into “adult” or erotic materials, mind you. Rather, they often know surprising details about very technical stuff: they learned Darwinian evolution through researching dinosaurs, or know the universal ideal gas law because they got curious about balloons…)
bmonk, I respectfully disagree (again). Calvin’s archetypes (how he uses his mental faculties) are those of an ENFP, not an INFP.
The types are often confused because the two have such closely related orders of thought processes (and like all NFs, have a strong tendency to invent imaginary friends). But Calvin’s Extraverted Intuiting is Heroic (Spaceman Spiff), not Good Parental; it’s his sense of personal values (Introverted Feeling) that’s Good Parental (and also Utterly Screwball). Whereas his sense of group values (Extraverted Feeling) is Bad Parental (giving rise to such verbal gems as “People are scum”). And no normal INFP resents authority and bureaucracy as a matter of principle in the way an ENFP does - and as Calvin does.
Christopher Robin (the original version) is an INFP. Calvin is an ENFP. The orders of thought processes are flip-flopped in closely matched pairs. They’d be great typical Pals if Calvin had Christopher Robin’s personal ethics.
@bmonk: You may be thinking of Joe Butt’s analysis (yes, that is his real name) on this page, on a site which I find valuable myself:
http://www.typelogic.com/infp.html
What he says applies very well to the creator of Calvin, but it doesn’t apply to Calvin. Mr. Butt may not see that because he’s using a four-level model rather than the eight-level model, and apart from archetypical considerations. (Sorry for the technical language, folks.)
ENFPs are just as apt, if not more so, to “switch between reality and fantasy” (indeed, we ENFPs often never really leave the latter and prefer the latter, unlike most INFPs I know who can differentiate readily between the two). Here are other, diagnostic things:
Calvin is very, very good at starting projects (even imaginary ones) but has more trouble with the follow-through. He has a consistent “get-things-going” social style, in other words (ENFP). INFPs work “behind the scenes” by preference, something Calvin never does.
Calvin’s “motto” in life is to “be authentic” - to be true to himself (ENFP). While he shares the NF compassion for life, it is the INFP who overwhelmingly “values every living thing” in a way Calvin doesn’t in either real life or especially in his fantasy (cf. Joe Butt’s own summary of ENFPs and INFPs in the mousepads on his site).
Calvin’s “silly switch” is so classically ENFP that it alone rules out his being a “core” INFP (again, compare Joe Butt’s own analysis of ENFPs!).
Truly diagnostic: Calvin’s “Trickster” archetype is tied to how he interprets why the way the world works the way it does. That thought process almost always leaves him stuck between two bad options (and often at the bottom of Dead Man’s Gulch). Unlike INFPs, Calvin isn’t uncomfortable in dealing with the sensual world; on the contrary, like an ENFP he often overindulges mindlessly in it.
There was someone on this list who was always coming up with funny variants of “Tiger Tiger Burning Bright” in response to the day’s strip. I wonder if he or she is still around?
imaginarypet over 14 years ago
lols
margueritem over 14 years ago
I think it’s pretty marvelous!
Wiseguy411 over 14 years ago
Hobbes is still in the room, Calvin
Wiseguy411 over 14 years ago
Good to see you back Marg. Hope you are feeling better.
Vista Bill Raley and Comet™ over 14 years ago
Welcome back, margueritem!
MontanaLady over 14 years ago
Well, Margureitem……we all seem to have missed you yesterday…:)
margueritem over 14 years ago
Thanks all. I’m doing better thanks to the wonders of modern drugs…. ;-)
carmy over 14 years ago
Hi Marg! Read it all, Dad!
Pacejv over 14 years ago
Marg…great what a bottle opener will do!
bigCandHfan over 14 years ago
welcome back Marg!! its almost like the day’s c&h strip is incomplete without ur comment at the top…
Hobbes is a genius. and the poem is marvellous.
Soumen over 14 years ago
Poor dad !!
Rakkav over 14 years ago
Another instant “A” for Calvin, by Hobbes! :)
COWBOY7 over 14 years ago
Hobbes could be a writer someday.
Glad you’re feeling better, Marg! You’re a special person.
tirnaaisling over 14 years ago
Based on that poem Dad should either start believing in Hobbes or start believing his son is an intellectual prodigy. Some how I think from his point of view believing in Hobbes might be easier ;)
Welcome back to the land of the slightly healthy Marg :)
mexdr1958 over 14 years ago
Dad´s expression of puzzlement in the second panel says he realizes it was his son, not Hobbes, who wrote it, yet he cannot believe his son is capable of such well accomplished writing.
Yukoner over 14 years ago
Calvin, the ghost writer.
florchi over 14 years ago
According to the Chinese zodiac, we have just entered the Year of the Tiger (Feb. 10 to Feb. 11). Go Hobbes!
vibjyor over 14 years ago
Hi Marg, Good to see you back.
Dad must be wondering who wrote that ‘An ode to tigers’.
LukeandPu over 14 years ago
Hey dad, don’t skip the part about the warm furry pillow at the fireplace …
Ray_C over 14 years ago
Do you all remember this from high school?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright, In the forests of the night…
…Did He who made the lamb make thee?
http://www.bartleby.com/101/489.html
Ray_C over 14 years ago
Oh, and welcome back, Marg.
DolphinGirl78 over 14 years ago
Glad to see you’re feeling better Marg… :)
linsonl over 14 years ago
Yeah, I sure remember “Tiger, Tiger burnng bright: Do you remember “Pigeons on the grass, alas?”
DONT say, “If you’d let us smoke what these poets were smoking when they wrote this bleeep, we might enjoy it, too.” Teacher didnt like that.
rshive over 14 years ago
Looks like a little more than an ode. Perhaps an epic?
jrbj over 14 years ago
Since Hobbs is lying there filled with fluff and stuff it is obvious that Calvin is the ghost writer of An Ode to Tigers. Pretty imaginative and the vocabulary isn’t bad for a 6 year old either.
IndyMan over 14 years ago
Who among us could believe that Calvin could come up with such an ode to his sidekick considering Calvin’s hatred of school and learning. What child at Calvin/s age knows about ‘haute couture and compares it with camoflage?
florchi over 14 years ago
@IndyMan: Calvin’s amazing vocabulary is always one of the best parts of reading the strip. :-)
Herocoder over 14 years ago
I actually wanna hear the rest of it .. :-)
Vonnegut over 14 years ago
“Do you like Kippling?”
“I don’t know. I never kippled.”
midiranger over 14 years ago
I wonder if it even occurs to Calvin that his parents don’t believe Hobbes is real . .
N7326 Foxtrot - lol - funny wish I’d thought of that (back then)
glad you’re feeling better Marg . .
LornaP over 14 years ago
@Susan001: “For” pages could also be correct. As in, “Yes, it goes on for pages.” (Three, four, seven, ten… we don’t really know. Dozens, perhaps?)
ninmas over 14 years ago
good job hobbes!
bald over 14 years ago
actually hobbs seems to be an accomplished writer of prose and poetry
Will we hear more of his works ?
GROG Premium Member over 14 years ago
Long winded, I’d say.
Good to see you back, Marg
Trainwreck_1 over 14 years ago
I have this vision in my head now of Hobbes doing a Softshoe as dad reads and Calvin provides a nice music accompaniment…
Ooops! Premium Member over 14 years ago
I like it…………..More! More!
rw1h over 14 years ago
The irony here is that if Calvin HAD to have a poem ready for a school assignment, “Hobbes” wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything……
BigHug over 14 years ago
Calvin does learn. He is driven by his own agenda and his own thirst for knowledge. Ironically it’s school that slows him down. It’s the monotony and the filling worksheets mentality of school. This type of learning is not inspiring. You are taught facts and how to regurgitate. I’ve seen worksheets for everything including nature studies and science! My best learning came in University and on my own. I slept through many, many years of school before that.
ratlum over 14 years ago
Calvin and Hobbes writers of deep thoughts and emotions. Great
okaythen over 14 years ago
Who knows, Hobbs might get rich as a writer. Keep it up old pal.
Dry and Dusty Premium Member over 14 years ago
Hi Marg!
Calvin is such a hoot! Love that last panel!
bmonk over 14 years ago
The only regret I ever had about this strip was that we always saw Dad, and so couldn’t see how Hobbes was reacting to this.
lazygrazer over 14 years ago
page three…
A tiger’s growl will make you faint; A cowardly lion is what they ain’t!
A tiger’s kiss makes the girls wish they could have some tuna fish!
margueritem over 14 years ago
Thanks, everyone! I’ll try hard not to fail at my job again.
;-)
margueritem over 14 years ago
Excellent poem, grazer!
Dino-1 over 14 years ago
Marg: Glad you’re feeling more like yourself!
I like Hobbes’ poem especially the part, “Haute Couture”’ very chic!
coffeeturtle over 14 years ago
Tigers are indeed magnificent animals! Go Hobbes, go!
dudeabideshou over 14 years ago
Could the tiger’s stripes lacking hues compared to “you-know-whose” possibly be related to Dad’s striped shirt?
rentier over 14 years ago
Keep healthy, Marg!
Brother_James437 over 14 years ago
Only from the mind of a child (oh, sorry, mind of a stuffed tiger).
Gretchen's Mom over 14 years ago
More … more … more!!!!!
khpage over 14 years ago
Does this kid have ADHD? I have seen him produce reams of stuff on other subjects of his interest before. He is no more a normal six year old than I am…
bmonk over 14 years ago
No, khpage he’s just a normal INFP male. Quite rare (about 2%), they find ways to amuse themselves, and need to, since most “average” masculine pastimes–like sports–are not very interesting to them. Instead, they plunge deeply into what does interest them, and produce large quantities of, as you say, “stuff” on often erudite, often age-inappropriate matters. (Not that they are particularly into “adult” or erotic materials, mind you. Rather, they often know surprising details about very technical stuff: they learned Darwinian evolution through researching dinosaurs, or know the universal ideal gas law because they got curious about balloons…)
-DukeNukem- over 14 years ago
Of course it goes on for pages, you imaginationless “dad”. A tiger’s beauty is poetic, and must be appreciated in full deTAIL.
Rakkav over 14 years ago
bmonk, I respectfully disagree (again). Calvin’s archetypes (how he uses his mental faculties) are those of an ENFP, not an INFP.
The types are often confused because the two have such closely related orders of thought processes (and like all NFs, have a strong tendency to invent imaginary friends). But Calvin’s Extraverted Intuiting is Heroic (Spaceman Spiff), not Good Parental; it’s his sense of personal values (Introverted Feeling) that’s Good Parental (and also Utterly Screwball). Whereas his sense of group values (Extraverted Feeling) is Bad Parental (giving rise to such verbal gems as “People are scum”). And no normal INFP resents authority and bureaucracy as a matter of principle in the way an ENFP does - and as Calvin does.
Christopher Robin (the original version) is an INFP. Calvin is an ENFP. The orders of thought processes are flip-flopped in closely matched pairs. They’d be great typical Pals if Calvin had Christopher Robin’s personal ethics.
Rakkav over 14 years ago
@bmonk: You may be thinking of Joe Butt’s analysis (yes, that is his real name) on this page, on a site which I find valuable myself:
http://www.typelogic.com/infp.html
What he says applies very well to the creator of Calvin, but it doesn’t apply to Calvin. Mr. Butt may not see that because he’s using a four-level model rather than the eight-level model, and apart from archetypical considerations. (Sorry for the technical language, folks.)
ENFPs are just as apt, if not more so, to “switch between reality and fantasy” (indeed, we ENFPs often never really leave the latter and prefer the latter, unlike most INFPs I know who can differentiate readily between the two). Here are other, diagnostic things:
Calvin is very, very good at starting projects (even imaginary ones) but has more trouble with the follow-through. He has a consistent “get-things-going” social style, in other words (ENFP). INFPs work “behind the scenes” by preference, something Calvin never does.
Calvin’s “motto” in life is to “be authentic” - to be true to himself (ENFP). While he shares the NF compassion for life, it is the INFP who overwhelmingly “values every living thing” in a way Calvin doesn’t in either real life or especially in his fantasy (cf. Joe Butt’s own summary of ENFPs and INFPs in the mousepads on his site).
Calvin’s “silly switch” is so classically ENFP that it alone rules out his being a “core” INFP (again, compare Joe Butt’s own analysis of ENFPs!).
Truly diagnostic: Calvin’s “Trickster” archetype is tied to how he interprets why the way the world works the way it does. That thought process almost always leaves him stuck between two bad options (and often at the bottom of Dead Man’s Gulch). Unlike INFPs, Calvin isn’t uncomfortable in dealing with the sensual world; on the contrary, like an ENFP he often overindulges mindlessly in it.
The Prosecution rests.
(and the angels rejoiced that it finally shut up)
Ooops! Premium Member over 14 years ago
Um…… Did you ever consider that Calvin is close to the border on the INFP/ENFP personality? There are different degrees of introvert/extrovert.
Way back when I took the test my scores all fell into the closest to middle score possible.
zerotsm over 14 years ago
There was someone on this list who was always coming up with funny variants of “Tiger Tiger Burning Bright” in response to the day’s strip. I wonder if he or she is still around?
krisch over 14 years ago
this one’s not really up there by Bill’s standards..
the one where Hobbes makes calvin read pages of verse just to let him climb into a tree is pretty hilarious..
Loki91308 over 2 years ago
Nice, Hobbes. Reminds me of the one where Hobbes and Calvin start a G.R.O.S.S meeting by announcing themselves in rhyme.