It was about ten years ago that I mentioned Calvinball to a high-schooler, and they had no idea what I was talking about.
Though I think that’s due in large part to Watterson’s refusal to license out anything from the strip.
Yup. Between that, and the fact that the strip ended 31 years ago, it’s completely off the radar to anyone born in the last three decades, probably unless their parents were fans, and got them into it.
I’m pleased to say that my grandchildren (13 and 10) are fans of C&H, in part because I gave them most of my complete collection of the books.
My mind immediately went to this, which I’m going to assume your grandkids are also fond of (who isn’t?). It took my mind a clunky ten or twenty seconds to click on Calvin and Hobbes.
ETA: But now I’ve got that goddamn jingle running through my head. Sing it with me and live my ear-worm damnation!
Man, I’d forgotten about that. It’s kind of dark to think that there was an era where those kids were probably working those fields as well as running around in them.
Likewise, my 4-year-old grandson looks forward to Calvin & Hobbes as his bedtime stories of choice. Years ago my son gifted me with the complete three-volume collection, surely one of my most prized (and enjoyed) possessions.
I read it recently and it definitely holds up. My son is as obsessed with his Beep as Calvin is with his tiger so I think he’d find it relatable (including all the trouble Calvin gets into.)
But you know you’ve aged when you find yourself sympathizing with his parents. That strip where he hammered nails into the coffee table…
You know you’re getting old when you have to make a noise bending over.
True. But the noise while straightening up starts even sooner.
Indeed. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I complained to my doctor – a very competent older fellow who had also been a distinguished head of Family Practice at a major hospital – about a mysterious pain in my arm. He was about to retire in a few weeks and wanted nothing more than to disappear into peaceful retirement, and muttered to himself sarcastically, “oh, good, something simple!”.
Poor guy. He dutifully went about doing a diagnosis, and it was only later that it occurred to me that a day or two previously I’d been viciously hacking and sawing at overgrowth in my back yard and hauling it all out to a giant dumpster in the driveway. Of course my arm hurt!
Today I can barely get out of bed. I have to hire kids to mow and trim the lawn in a much smaller back yard.
When I made the post, my entire body felt like I had run run a marathon, climbed Mt. Fuji and swam back to America, but I don’t remember doing a damn thing to hurt that badly.
Fortunately, the sore muscles did stop hurting but I’m still mystified.
I wasn’t all that old when i started. I remember driving to a dance weekend with a friend, and i mentioned my shoulder was sore. He asked why. I said i didn’t know. I was mid 40s and he was about 50, and he brought up the topic of being able to wrench a muscle by sleeping wing when you got old.
One I noticed in my early 40s: I had long known that getting old would mean old injuries coming back to haunt one, and some body parts not always working right, as a result. But I never anticipated that that would apply to eyebrows.
Eyebrows are supposed to keep sweat and rain from running into one’s eyes. Mine are big and bushy, and work well for that. Or at least, my right one does. My left eyebrow has a scar running right along it, from a silly childhood injury. And as a result, when I’m out in the rain or heat for too long, I end up having to scrunch my left eye closed, because it’s getting too much runoff.
That’s nothing. I still think of Jonathan Banks as the guy from Wiseguy.
I’m jealous. Mine are thin and sparse, and have never worked well for that. That’s one of the many reasons i hate to sweat. It always gets into my eyes.
For me, Tom Hanks should be in a dress and Ryan Reynolds should be living above a pizza place.
A simple solution is to rub a bit of petroleum jelly into the eyebrow that…“leaks”.
Sweat rolls off to the side…not straight through into your eyes.
Of course, you will now have dust magnets on your face…and that I have no work-around.
I’ve crossed the Rubicon.
I recently started a cross stitch project at a slightly smaller gauge fabric (18-count) than what I’m used to, and realized it’s making me motion sick.
I repeat: stitching is making me motion sick.
So I swallowed my pride and ordered my first pair of reading glasses. 
Welcome to the club - I gave in about three years ago. The annoying thing about them is that on the one hand I absolutely need them to read stuff like tiny print instructions on pill bottles which are otherwise verging on virtually unreadable to me now even in perfect light. But on the other while they make reading easier in general, my vision is right in that middle stage of deterioration where they technically really help but are genuinely a pain in the ass to use in every other scenario. I end up getting frustrated trying to read a book for example, as even an inch or two of variance blurs my vision so much I find it is much easier to squint and/or shove the book closer to my face than keep using the glasses.
I guess I was an old man in third grade.
When I had cataract surgery, an option was for more expensive lenses that would let me eliminate my glasses. I said hell, no. After all these years my glasses were a part of me. That was the reason I was never interested in contacts.
If I was a nerd, I should at least look the part.