Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for January 02, 2023

If Dad can bicycle in the snow, he can shovel it.

In the end, everyone wins!

If Calvin was building snow goons, he’d think the shoveling was fun.

And such a character Calvin has built.

Dad’s trying to get Calvin in shape to handle Moe.

I don’t know many parents that put a 6-year-old to work shovelling their driveway. :P

actually, Calvin already is a character, so I think good ol’ dad is just trying to dampen his character with a little bit of exhaustive physical exertion.

Calvin – Shovelling cold hard reality. Feel ya’, lad!

Calling a spade a spade………

Pretty convenient how he is already a comic strip character.

Where I live, I shovel the front steps. Everywhere else I snowblow. If I shoveled everything, there’d be times when I couldn’t keep up. Think Watertown NY. And yes, I’ve seen Viggo Mortenson at Shorty’s Place!

Tasking a 6-year-old with snow shoveling isn’t building character.

Dad’s good at shoveling something, but it’s not snow

s no use complaining, kid!

A great bonding exercise for young and old(er) alike.

I agree with you Calvin, Dad’s just a big cheapskate!

Thanks to Calvinist1966, I am on here. :D

Well, if you knew how much things cost, you should be glad that he’s saving money!

When you start making the money, kid, you can buy the snowblower.

You know, now that I think about it, the words “good ol’” are usually invoked to describe equipment I have to use when work is harder than it needs to be.

At least Calvin has a shovel. We had to use our bare hands. We had it rough.

A pittance for you college fund. Or Bail.

Well Calvin, all play and no work makes for a useless child.

Where Calvin lives, they need all the shovels they can get.

That’s the nature of Dad’s character

LOL!

Up North kids start shoveling snow at an early age. I remember, for sure.

Where’s Hobbes??

My dad never played the “character” card with me; he was just too cheap to buy a snow blower!

Same thing with mowing the lawn. He had this ridiculous little electric mower with a coffee grinder motor that would stall out if the mower ran over more than two blades of grass. Plus, he had a large back yard with many trees, so the extension cord was snaking all over everything. I kept telling him to get rid of the tinker toy and buy a gas mower. He kept saying they weren’t reliable.

So the minute I went off to college, what does he do? Yep…

At least give the kid a better shovel. I had a snow shovel that was a smaller version of the normal one: a good metal shovel that was proportional to my size. Dad kept it in the car trunk after my sister and I outgrew it. I only cleared the sidewalks when I was so young.

Ooo, dad’s poll numbers are gonna suffer… ☺

Maybe parents should have 6 year olds shoveling snow with the parents out there with them. Teaches the value of teamwork and provides the opportunity for sharing and talking.

Hard to find good help within the family to do snow stuff. Around here the kids don’t even want to go around trying to make a buck. We had two adult guys the other day come around after 4" of powder snow and I asked them how much to do my double wide single car deep driveway and they wanted 50 dollars cash for what takes me 15 minutes by myself. Sent them on their way.

You ought to get a cut of those savings, Calvin.

It doesn’t just build character – it builds muscle as well. Then you are able to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women! This is what is best in life (according to some). I’m sure it would appeal to Calvin.

as a former kid, I can assure you it builds resentment, not character.

When I was young, I begged my dad to let me push mow the yard. Seemed like fun. Little did I realize it then became my weekly chore. Dumb kid.

It’d be even more convenient if Calvin would shut up and do his job.

I remember when I was young having tp shovel the driveway whenever it snowed. Working out in the cold, biting snow, miserable, thinking about how unfair it all was, I swore, as God was my witness, that someday when I had a child of my own that I would NEVER shovel another driveway again.

Will it build character if Calvin injures his back lifting all those heavy loads of snow?

Is that what snow blowers went for then…

Calvin should be saving up for his flame thrower

I think Jeremy Renner might not agree

The money he saves not using a snow blower goes to a fund for bail money when you get older.

I usually shovel unless there is 5 inches or more of snow them the snow blower comes out. Back in the 50s and 60s we didn’t have any choice but to shovel.

Calvin, the money dad saves is earmarked for your upkeep.

It looks like a front walk, not a driveway. (And if you will forgive a bit of snark, in how many other ways does little Calvin contribute to the household bottom line? After all, in some ways the deepest human craving is “to matter”.)

Classic “builds character” moment. And of course, this was when only a small percentage of households in the USA had snowblowers. But geez, looks like they’ve fully jumped back from 1993 to 1989. Hopes this gets fixed soon…

Dad has to save a couple of hundred dollars because of the expense of the Noodle Incident.

Back when I was a kid in the mid 60’s my father used to say the same thing.. “Why should I buy a snowblower for several hundred bucks when I have 5 kids who I don’t have to pay to do the shoveling for me?” lol BTW our driveway was a few hundred feed long and wide.. It would take us hours to shovel it!! lol

My father shoveled his driveway himself even when he got into his 80s. If it was a really big snow storm he would have to go out to do it several times because he could only shovel so many inches of snow at a time. Family bought him a snow blower but he refused to use it. He had character.

Offer your comic book to Hobbes in exchange and see the result, Calvin.