Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for March 22, 1987

Poor dad, your prediction came true. It IS a grim day.

I wonder what “Dad” would say if he knew Calvin went over to Susie’s house to watch TV

a sad reality.

Foiled again.

Dynamite sure is a blast!

+++++

Is this a kid’s conspiracy to rot their brains?

Isn’t this why VCRs and Tivo were invented??

Yep, that day has come, replete with lack of original ideas and any sense of tastefulness. Yeesh.

Calvin and Susie Derkins are actully getting ALONG?!

Don’t worry, Dad. In time, kids will move away from TV and focus more on their smartphones and tablets.

Yes it’s worse now!

A rare strip, where there is some friendship between Susie and Calvin…

Dad doesn’t know just how true his statement in panel 5 turned out to be years later

They’re watching old Looney Tunes cartoons.

Poor dad He has a stubborn kid

“ooh youve twicked me for the last time, son”

When I was younger, I figured out that I could watch TV all day if I wanted to. I mean from when the day started with the test pattern ended to the late show that started at midnight. I may have actually done it twice. (I could potentially list all the shows I watched back then.)

I don’t get it; it’s obvious that Calvin’s parents don’t care much for TV, so why do they have a set? In place of the TV, they could have an assortment of books that everybody could enjoy together, such as:

1. Just So Stories (©1912) by Rudyard Kipling

2. ABC of Cars and Trucks (©1954) by Anne Alexander

3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (©1964) by Roald Dahl

4. Farewell to Shady Glade (©1966) by Bill Peet

5. Little Turtle’s Big Adventure (©1969) by David Lee Harrison

6. The Wump World (©1970) by Bill Peet

7. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (©1972) by Roald Dahl

8. Barbapapa’s Ark (©1974) by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor

9. The Gnats of Knotty Pine (©1975) by Bill Peet

10. Dinosaurs (©1977) by Peter Zallinger

11. Do You Know? (©1979) by B. G. Ford

12. Everyday Things (©1981) by Eliot Humberstone

13. The Doomsday Book of Animals: An illustrated account of the fascinating creatures which the world will never see again (©1981) by David Day

14. The Luckiest One of All (©1982) by Bill Peet

15. The Witches (©1983) by Roald Dahl

16. The Big Book of Animal Records (©1984) by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor

17. The Encyclopedia of Mammals (©1984) by Dr. David W. Macdonald (editor)

I often wish that the first chapter book that I’d learned to read was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (©1964) by Roald Dahl (1916-1990). I could’ve learned a lot from the song that the Oompa-Loompas sing about the dangers of watching too much TV.

♪"The most important thing we’ve learned/So far as children are concerned/Is never, NEVER, NEVER let/Them near your television set/Or better still, just don’t install/The idiotic thing at all…"♪

Willy Wonka made a good point of his own, to which I can easily relate:

“I don’t like television myself. I suppose it’s all right in small doses, but children never seem to be able to take it in small doses. They want to sit there all day long, staring and staring at the screen….”

Trust me, I never “took TV in small doses” when I was a child, but it’s clear that I should have. I was born in 1982; another example of a book that I realize that I should have taken an interest in is The Doomsday Book of Animals: An illustrated account of the fascinating creatures which the world will never see again (©1981) by David Day. It’s about animals and plants that have become extinct as a result of anthropogenic factors, e.g. habitat destruction and over-harvesting.