Letter to Calvin and Hobbes

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

Masters Calvin and Hobbes,

Please forgive the unexpected Nature of this letter, but I have recently learned of the existence of those creatures called Dinosaurs and require two Cunning guides though this new world of Knowledge. I understand from Miss Sto Helit that you two are Experts on this subject and as such I have come to you.

Would you do me the very great Honor of attending me at the New Orleans train station one of these days after your lessons? I should be the most Gratified and Gratefull of pupils.

Yours most sincerely,
John Adams

Comments

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drinking deeply from the Pierian spring, for a bratty six-year-old, can be even worse.

Dear Mr. Adams,

You didn't know about DINOSAURS?! How could you not know about dinosaurs?!?!

I guess I could teach you. Most people's eyes sort of glaze over after the first couple hours, but if you actually want to know about them I could tell you the basics. It's too bad there's no natural history museum here.

I can meet you tomorro
I don't know, though, my afternoons are pretty packed. Maybe you could ask Susan if I could have the morning off from classes to teach you?

Sincerely,

CALVIN
(and Hobs)

"Hobs" is written in orange crayon, in noticeably different handwriting. Returning to the original hand:

P.S.: You might also want to ask Susan for help with your English composition. You're only supposed to capitalize starts of sentences and proper nouns, and you misspelled "grateful."

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

Masters Calvin and Hobbes (Hobs?),

It seems that dinosaurs were not described until sometime after I left my home in the year of our Lord, 1776. Having discovered my ignorance, I now seek to alleviate it and your assistance would be most appreciated. I shall endeavor to attend you as long as possible.

I've written to Miss Sto Helit and it seems she is unwilling to release you from your lessons for one morning. Could I somehow persuade you to meet me during the afternoon instead? She was also kind enough to inform me, as you did, that the rules of spelling and grammar have changed since I first learned them. Therefore, I have attempted in this letter to follow these new tenets correctly. I confess it looks odd to me, but such is this brave new world I find myself in.

I am,
Your humble,
J. Adams

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

Dear Mr. Adams,

I guess I could do that. Meet you tomorrow after lunch?

I am,
The great and amazing,
Calvin

P.S.: Hobbes changes the way he spells his name. He says it's a tiger's prerogative.

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

Masters Calvin and Hobbes,

Very well. I shall meet you at the First Aid Station after lunch.

I remain,
Your humble,
J. Adams

PS - I will have to trust Master Hobbes' word on that as I have no tiger friends of my own.

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

If there was one thing you could say about Calvin, it was that when he decided to make an effort he really made an effort. Not always in ways that made sense to other people, of course. But Susan had been surprisingly forgiving of him scrounging the park and bringing home everything even remotely dinosaur related or which could be made to look dinosaur related he could find yesterday afternoon, and setting it up at the back of the room she'd turned into a classroom.

Thus it was that when Adams arrived, he was confronted with a small pterodactyl (http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/innocentsmith/ch890226.jpg).

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

John arrived promptly after lunch for his educational journey and babysitting adventure. With a reassuring smile for Susan, he looked at the small boy wearing something like a cape and a dunce cap and said, "Oh, pardon me, Master Bird. Would you happen to know if Master Calvin is at liberty to receive me?"

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

"I'm not a bird," said Calvin in an injured tone. "I'm a pteranodon, a pterosaur of the Cretaceous period! There were birds around back then - Archaeopteryx evolved during the late Jurassic - but they actually evolved from the saurischians. The advanced pterodactyloid pterosaurs evolved their semi-upright stance and flight capabilities independently from the birds."

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

Looking a bit stunned having only understood maybe one word in five in Calvin's speech, John blinked. "My apologies, Master Tranadon. But perhaps we should begin with the basics..."

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

"Well, I was planning to." The if you hadn't distracted me with 'bird' comments... was implicit. Calvin flapped his arms a couple times in thought, and then started off:

"Okay, so, the dinosaurs all lived in the Mesozoic Era, which goes from 251 million years ago to 65 million years ago, when the meteor crash happened and the Cenozoic Era started. We're living in the Cenozoic Era. It's not as cool, although we do have TV. The Mesozoic is divided into the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods...are you going to need visual aids for this or anything?"

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

Good thing John had stopped by the stationary store for that Mickey Mouse notepad and pen...

"Dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era from 251 million years ago to 65 million years ago, which is further subdivided into three periods, the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous," he repeated, writing rapidly in frankly terrible handwriting. (It was the pen, he was convinced.)

Although John already had questions about the dates, the relationship of these monsters to religion, and what TV was, but he decided not to ask. Either Calvin would cover them in his lecture or they were too sophisticated for an admittedly remarkable six year old.

((Reposted for egregious typo. Sorry!))

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

"Right. So, um, right at the start of the Triassic there was this humongous mass extinction where 90% of all living species died. It's got a good name: 'The Great Dying.'" (This said with all due melodrama.) "Nobody knows what caused it, they think maybe it was something boring like oxygen levels changing or a meteor like the one at the end of the Cretaceous. Or a supernova that sent out gamma radiation - kind of like how superheroes get their powers - or all the volcanoes on Earth going blooey all at once. I think it was an alien nano-robo-virus, and I wrote Science Magazine about it, but they didn't print my letter."

"Anyway, so, before this happened, in the Permian, therapsids were all over the place. Therapsids are 'mammal-like reptiles.' But only one species survived, this sort of mini-hippopotamus pig thing, starts with an 'L.' That's what we and all the mammals evolved from. And meanwhile the reptile-like reptiles were taking over the land and they evolved into dinosaurs!"

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. John didn't understand a lot of what Calvin said again, although he was able to dismiss most of it as a tangent. Clearly, no one knew what killed off all the animal species prior to the rise of the dinosaurs, regardless of what gamma radiation, an alien nano-robot-virus, or superheroes were.

But as the boy continued, he had to interrupt. There was what seemed like a major concept here that he wasn't following. "What's evolution?"

The Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859...

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

Calvin blinked. Evolution was one of those concepts that was so basic to science in his era that he'd never really bothered to understand it, as such. Biology in the public school he attended could be summed up by the title of his essay, "BATS! The Big Bug Scourge of the Skies!" And despite the overall excellence of Miss Susan's approach to education, she was still from the Discworld where evolution worked on Lamarckian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarck#Lamarckian_Evolution) terms and a person could inherit characteristics from her adoptive grandfather.

"Well," he said slowly. "Um. You know how species change over time? Like, the giraffe that stretches its neck out the most will be able to reach the leaves on the tallest trees? Or, um, if a squirrel falls off a tree but it's got webbing or something in between its arms and it flaps them real hard, maybe it doesn't go splat? That's survival of the fittest. Evolution."

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

It was a mark of John's mind that he immediately began evaluating the concept not in scientific terms but political ones. He scribbled 'survival of the fittest' and 'evolution - things changing over time according to what works best' in his notebook and looked thoughtful.

After a moment, he shook himself. "My apologies, young sir. I didn't mean to interrupt. Please continue; this is all rather fascinating..."

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, Calvin really was a menace if he was encouraging an Enlightenment statesman to think in directions popular with fascists, Marxists who didn't understand their own philosophy, and early 20th c. intellectuals who hadn't actually read Nietzsche but heard he was the hip new thing. The boy would probably be proud of himself if he'd known.

As it was, he looked a little dubious, as though wondering whether Adams was pulling his leg with the enthusiasm. Calvin found it fascinating, of course...and after a moment his natural egotism reasserted itself. "Well, it is. Most of the time it happens really slowly, like with peacocks' tails getting bigger and bigger because girl peacocks are weird about what they look for when they're dating. But then every now and then something happens, like radiation or aliens interfering or something, and things start changing really fast, and there are all these mutants going around."

(All of which was correct, aside from the alien bit. Well, probably aside from the alien bit; one never knew about some of the realities around here.) Calvin did his best grimace and clawed the air slowly to illustrate the concept of "mutant."

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

Looking faintly startled at what looked like a fit, John realized Calvin was trying to illustrate a concept that was separate from the dinosaur he'd been earlier and relaxed.

"I understand. Any significant change must occur slowly, unless something extraordinary occurs."

He thought back over the last few years. Barring being stuck in magical landscapes, it made sense. The American people had read Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Their thoughts had 'evolved' long before the men of Congress deemed it possible. Thus it was left to Lee and his mutation - John snorted - to finally tip the scales. Suddenly he didn't feel so bad that Massachusetts hadn't been the state to introduce the resolution for independence.

But getting back to the topic, "Thus the dinosaurs evolved ever... larger?"

[irrepressible-c.livejournal.com]

"Yeah!...well, some of them. And some of them grew armor or tail spikes or developed poison ducts - some of them could spit poison over eight feet! - or fiendish predatory cunning. See," flipping open one of the books, "this is a Tyrannosaurus Rex! Actually," frowning at the illustration, "this isn't a very good book, it's got a dragging tail and the head shape's wrong. It must be an older edition." He flipped around through the pages.

"Okay, this is better, this is a triceratops. They were pretty cool for herbivores."

And, because some things were best expressed through spontaneous lyricism, he chanted,

"Tri-cer-a-tops with three long horns,
A beak like a parrot and a frill where its neck is!
Tri-cer-a-tops with three long horns
And a tail! In! Back!"

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

John stared at the pictures. "Fascinating. And how do you know what they ate or how they acted? You have nothing but bones, do you not? No poison...," he waved a vague hand in the air, "glands or whatnot could have survived that length of time."

((Calvin is so awesome. And John's such a stick in the mud. XD But I'm enjoying this terribly even though it's tons of work for you. Sorry!))