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Thursday was the 25th anniversary of Calvin & Hobbes.  I was obsessed with reading this comic in "the funnies" each day back when I was 16 and I vividly recall finding out on my birthday that Bill Watterson was taking his first hiatus.  I was crushed.  How would I live without my daily fix of a boy and his tiger?  Calvin and his little buddy were a wonderful, insightful, hysterical escape for my teenage self and I've never tired of reading and re-reading the books.

Once a boy broke my heart and kept all of my Calvin & Hobbes books, except two, and I remember calling him after we broke up to ask for them back.  I asked more than once to no avail and ended up screaming into his answering machine that I didn't give a damn about our break up; I just wanted my beloved books back!  (No, I never got them back.  Asshat.)  

Calvin & Hobbes was one of the things my Dad and I talked about the night he passed away.

I used to visit Grateful Dead shows just to collect the bootleg Calvin & Hobbes tees.  Bill Watterson, I'm glad you'll never read this.  

Last year, The Boy finally discovered my C&H books in his bookcase and fell in love, too.  I think he's read them all a zillion times each and we delight in reading them together before we fall asleep.  Giggling together over the endless shenanigans, sarcasm, jabs at the hapless Dad, the brilliant snowgoons, the philosophical questions that need a little explaining and the tender adoration of Calvin to his stuffed tiger are memories that I will take with me to the end.  I know he will, too.

“If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.” -Bill Waterson