An Ever-Maturing Perspective

Have you ever come to a place in your adult life where you looked back at some of the things from your childhood and seen it with a totally different perspective?  Ever find yourself wondering "why did I like that so much?" or "I can't believe it took me so long to like that!", or just noticed something about it that you never really considered before?  Such is the case with something I looked back upon recently.

Growing up, one of my favorite comic strips to read was Calvin and Hobbes.  It chronicled the life of Calvin, a first grader with an over-active imagination, and the mischevious adventures he would get into with his best friend Hobbes, a stuffed Tiger who was able to talk and laugh and play with Calvin, but was only a lifeless stuffed animal to everybody else.  Calvin was able to turn a cardboard box into a time machine and a machine for cloning himself, have deep philosophical conversations with Hobbes, run away from his mother giving him a bath, argue with or gross out Suzie - his classmate and secret crush, explore the far reaches of the known universe as Spaceman Spiff, and terrorize his babysitter all in a single day.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading them starting from about the time I was in about 3rd grade, and still occasionally will enjoy reading them today.  I still have some of the books my parents gave me when I was a kid, and it is one thing I hope to be able to pass on to my own kids some day.

But, the other day, I picked up one of the books, and read one of the strips inside.  Suddenly a thought occured to me that I had never even considered when I read them in my younger days.  That is - WHY THE HECK IS CALVIN SO SMART???!!  Seriously, how does he know so much?

For an example, here is the comic that got me thinking about this:
Calvin is doing a normal kid thing to do - he has a lemonade stand, with lemonade to sell.  But, the lemonade is nothing but a pitcher of water with a whole lemon sitting in it, and the sign says the lemonade costs $15 a glass.  Suzie walks up and is outraged:
"15 Dollars a glass?!!  How do you justify charging 15 dollars??!"
"Supply and Demand," Calvin says
Suzie looks around and sees no one.  "What demand?  I don't see any demand!"
"There's lots of demand!  As the sole stockholder in this enterprise, I demand monstrous profit on my investment; as president and CEO of the company, I demand an exorbinant annual salary; and as my own employee, I demand a high hourly wage and all sorts of company benefits.  And then there's overhead and actual production costs."
Suzie looks puzzled..."But, it looks like you just threw a lemon in some sludgey water!"
"Hey, I have to cut costs somewhere if I want to stay competitive."
"Well, what if I get sick from drinking that?"
"'Caveat emptor,' is our motto.  I'll have to charge more if we follow health and environmental regulations."
"You're out of your mind, Calvin.  I'm going home to drink something else."
"Sure!  Put me out of a job!  You're the anti-business type who's ruining our economy!!"

Calvin then goes home and tells his mother he needs to be subsidized.

Now, of course this is hilarious and great entertainment.  But, the thing I never really thought about before is this - this kid is supposed to be in 1st grade!  Where did he learn such a vocabulary, not to mention his understanding of stockholder expectations, corporate salaries, operation and production costs, regulatory effects on business cost, and subsidization?  I surely have never met any 1st grader who grasped any of those concepts, have you my friend?  I didn't learn about those things until high school.  But then again, that may be why I still sometimes enjoy reading it to this day, after all - I didn't fully understand some of the humor until I was older.

But anyways, I was just intrigued by this new perspective on that little tow-headed 1st grader.

Thanks for reading, and until next time - don't drink and drive, don't text and drive, and God bless America, it's a beautiful country!