Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for September 16, 2020

The making of a grifter.

And so begins Calvin’s new career as a con man.

not exactly

Hobbes catches on fast…

You’re going to be disappointed, Dad… Again!

Calvin, always the practical lad.

Where does Hobbes get all that money? Has he got something going on the side?

The flim-flam man.

Pennies from heaven.

Getting more money is always fun!

When I was young, I knew a kid who convinced his younger sister to give him a quarter in exchange for five pennies, on the grounds that “you’re have FIVE moneys and I’ll only have ONE money!” I wonder if he ended up selling used cars, or in politics.

Just to be clear, I am not so old that a twenty five cents was much money back then. It wasn’t enough for a single copy of Spider-Man from the “Hey Kids! Comics!” spinner rack down at the convenience store — that was would have been somewhere between a quarter and a dime and two quarters. It might have been enough for a roll of LifeSavers.

Miss Wormwood: If you had eight pennies and I asked you for five, how many would you have left?

Calvin: Eight.

Calvin reminds me of an exchange I had in childhood of a half dollar and a dime for three nickles “for more money”. I made the same mistake trusting my sister decades later.

Like I said yesterday…Calvin may still need help with math, but he’s getting finance down just fine.

♫ Give ‘em the ol’ razzle-dazzle, razzle-dazzle ’em…♫

I got called to school when my son was 8. Seems he was studying percentages and thought it was a good idea to loan out his lunch money and charge interest.

Practicality usually works better. But in this case …

Give a man a dollar and he will have a dollar. Teach him how to “add” dollars and he will get other peoples dollars until he is caught.

Learned larceny.

I guess he did learn something.

There will soon be another parent/teacher conference to discuss Calvin taking the other kids’ lunch money.

How do we know if Calvin really does understand adding and subtracting now, or if he’s just faking it to con Hobbes out of his money?

Calvin’s father was trying to do what I wish my math teachers had done. If they had connected math with how we would be using it in real life, I might not have hated it so much. Of course my number dyslexia didn’t help matters either, but at least I would have connected it to the real world instead of just seeing a bunch of math problems. If someone had told me that, later in life, I’d need to measure so much stuff in my home for projects, it would have meant something.

Can you change two tens for a five? (Abbott and Costello)

So what’s Calvin’s is his and what’s Hobbes’ is his …

Do NOT show that trick to Moe – he won’t like it!

Perhaps Hobbes could teach him subtraction.

The only way to get him doing his homework.

that usually is the best way to teach a kid math, there ARE other practical applications of math in life but money is a good motivator.

Somebody needs to knock some cents into Clavin!

Maybe he now in class will do better.

I sure miss Calvin and Hobbes. My collection of books was lost in Katrina. But at least I can enjoy it here.

Or you may have created a con artist.

A penny for what Hobbes is thinking.