Boy, My Lunch Box Seems Light
In the previous installment of Tiger Tracks, I presented cases where an action taken by Hobbes negatively impacted Calvin in some way. In doing so, I came to the conclusion that we simply cannot trust any event seen only through Calvin’s eyes, and that these actions are self-inflicted is entirely within reason.
But that supposes that Calvin is, to some extent, cognizant of reality but is choosing to ignore it. What if instead, Hobbes did something that disadvantaged Calvin, without Calvin being aware?
The strip published on October 18th, 1986 begins with three panels of Calvin waiting for the school bus and griping about how bad the day is going to be. Hobbes responds very little during this monologue, as he is depicted eating a sandwich and drinking from a thermos cup. The most clever element of this strip is that you’re too busy reading Calvin’s dialogue to pay much attention to what Hobbes is doing, until you reach the final panel:
I realize that I have argued extensively that we should take any event not witnessed by another character with a grain of salt. However, there’s a case to be made that, while this particular exchange wasn’t observed, the outcome very well may be. Perhaps Calvin will need to ask Susie for lunch money, or will go hungry and act out in class mid-afternoon. And the difference between my previous post and this one is that, this time, Calvin doesn’t know what happened to put him in this situation. If he’s been taken entirely by surprise, how can this be his own doing?
As previously discussed, we know that Calvin is absolutely willing to misinterpret events to fulfill his own preferred narratives. This means that, while we can’t accuse Calvin of orchestrating events this time, it also leaves some leeway to not pin the blame on Hobbes, either.
Okay… But then, what happened to the lunch?
The assertion that I was originally going to present was that Calvin’s parents failed to adequately equip him for school today; that, most likely via simple neglect, they did not sufficiently pack Calvin’s lunchbox to enable him to succeed in his educational endeavors. And I know what you’re going to say: “But Calvin’s mom and dad are the most put-together people to ever exist. They are the Platonic ideal of middle-class suburban parents.”
To which I would respond: Are you sure?
Yes, we see many, many instances of Mom and Dad performing their duties as responsible parents. And maybe to some extent, they are. Even from Calvin’s perspective—the lens through which we observe them in most cases—although they appear overly-strict and exceedingly dull (and it’s natural for kids to see their parents this way), in general, they still come across as considerate, loving caretakers. And yet, I feel as though there is room for more that we are just not witnessing.
Let’s start with Dad. We are, in fact, given undeniable proof via college yearbook that he was not always the seemly, respectable man he is today:
And just to counter any cries of “well, he’s grown out of that phase of his life”:
But unlike in the above example, Dad doesn’t often get his kicks at home. No, he’s living out his wild-and-crazy lifestyle at work. The man’s a patent attorney, for crying out loud. A lawyer. I’ve seen Wolf of Wall Street, I know what kind of hedonistic lifestyles these kinds of guys lead.
.......Wait, it’s probably actually finance guys in that movie, not lawyers, isn’t it. Okay, so I haven’t seen Wolf of Wall Street. BUT STILL. You’re telling me that whenever home life is feeling unsatisfactory, Dad’s go-to getaway is his office? I don’t buy for a second he’s going there just to work.
This is a recurring theme, by the way.
Okay, but let’s be honest with ourselves here: as the breadwinner of the family, Dad is likely not the one packing Calvin’s lunch. No, household responsibilities have been split along traditional gender roles here, and the stay-at-home Mom is the one taking care of the domestics. Which means that whether or not Dad is still secretly living his frat-boy lifestyle is irrelevant; we need to determine if Mom is neglecting her caretaker role. This is far more difficult to say for certain. But there are clues.
For example, she is not immune from photographic evidence captured during high school prom:
But aside from this, we see even less of Mom’s personality in these strips than we do of Dad’s. We know Dad enjoys camping and bicycling (the latter of which doesn’t feature until halfway through the comic’s run, so I can only assume this is his replacement hobby after he gets out of rehab). We never see Mom engaging in any vocations in this way; Watterson even goes out of his way on multiple occasions to make it clear that, unlike Dad, she does not enjoy camping. So what does she do?
In most cases, when we see Calvin interrupting his mother, she is occupied with one of the following activities:
- Cooking, cleaning, and the like
- Re-painting furniture (it’s odd this happens more than once)
- Gardening
- Reading a book
Of these, the first two could be considered household maintenance items and likely wouldn’t be performed out of enjoyment. Gardening might fit into either camp, but we will be discounting it shortly. Reading books is a perfectly valid pasttime to have, but like… is that really the only thing she does when she has nothing else to do?
And don’t forget, these are just the activities that Calvin sees; in other words, the things she is doing whenever he happens to be around. What about when Calvin is at school? What does she do with her day then? Of course she has her usual chores and errands… except 1) she doesn’t have to devote any energy to watching Calvin and is able to get things done more quickly, and 2) much of the school year takes place over fall and winter, where there is very little gardening to be done. So is she just… reading all day with her free time?
Of course not. Some days, she is also partaking in inebriants.
Yes, my evidence is circumstantial here; I can’t point to any instances of Mom being in an altered state. On the other hand, since we witness most events through Calvin’s eyes, if he doesn’t notice anything amiss (and why would he expect to?), then neither do we. To that end, I would point to two truths that arouse my suspicions.
The first truth is: on no less than three occasions, we see Calvin leave school unexpectedly early to go home. And on every one of these occasions, we see Mom opening the door for him.
But why does she need to let Calvin into the house at all? Can’t he simply walk in? After all, on a normal day, he can get into the house on his own just fine—we see this all the time whenever Hobbes pounces on him as soon as he opens the door. The fact that he needs to be let in on the days he leaves school early implies that on these occasions, the door is locked when he gets home, and Calvin doesn’t have his own key to the house.
Except this is particularly strange behavior on the part of Mom. Because according to the April 16th, 1989 strip—wherein Calvin, to prevent being pounced upon coming home from school, outsmarts Hobbes and traps him outside—Mom apparently leaves the door unlocked when she leaves the house to go out for groceries. You can see here she’s not at all prepared to deal with the door being locked:
(Yes, Calvin does technically enter the house through the window in this strip; but since we know he doesn’t have a key, and Mom seemingly doesn’t have a key either, she must have left the door open because otherwise she’d essentially be locking both of them out.)
And the only justification for Mom being okay with leaving the doors open when she’s out of the house but not when she’s home is because she doesn’t want to be disturbed during the day. Clearly, she’s doing something she doesn’t want her kid to see; and given that he has a repeated pattern of just happening to show up at home during school hours, locking the doors is her sole defense against being discovered holding a crack pipe.
Now, the second truth: Mom’s weekday mornings are more inconsistent than those of anybody else in the house. Dad gets up, gets dressed, eats breakfast, and goes to work. Calvin… is pretty consistently dragged out of bed ten minutes before the school bus arrives. But Mom? We see her in different states. Some days, she’s already dressed by the time she wakes Calvin up:
On other days, she seems like she’s barely out of bed herself:
Clearly, this indicates that Mom has good mornings, but also has bad mornings… mornings, perhaps, in which she is still hungover from her imbibing the previous day? Mornings in which she is barely conscious herself, and could easily forget to pack her child’s lunch?
…At least, that was the argument I was originally going to put forth. But then, I noticed something. Go look at the first panel of this strip at the top of the page, as well panel three, here:
Do you see a lunchbox anywhere in either of these panels? Because I sure don’t. We are clearly shown the area immediately around Calvin and Hobbes, and there is not a lunchbox in sight. And I swear to god, if you even try to convince me that the rectangle Calvin is comfortably holding under his arm is a lunchbox and not a textbook… c’mon, that thing might be thinner than that sandwich Hobbes is snacking on, and everybody knows lunchboxes have handles.
So what gives? Calvin does’t have a lunchbox while he’s waiting for the bus, but suddenly has one when he sits down? This is incredibly difficult to account for, but account for it we must. As far as I see it, there’s only three realistic possibilities here:
- Calvin’s coked-up mom realized at the last minute she didn’t prepare Calvin’s lunch and threw in a pack of Dunkaroos before speeding out to the curb as the bus arrived.
- Due to a mixup, Calvin accidentally grabbed another kid’s half-empty lunchbox prepared by their own coked-up mother and mistook it for his own.
- The previous evening, Calvin left his lunchbox on the bus, where it remained until this morning; meanwhile, his mother was too coked-up to notice.
Verdict: All I know is Hobbes is blameless on this one.