Calvin's mother

Calvin's mother
File:Mom.gif
First appearance:	November 26, 1985
Last appearance:	in HELL!
Other characters

"Just once I'd like to see you manage this during the school year." Calvin's mom, from It's a Magical World after seeing Calvin charging outside with Hobbes during the summer.

Calvin's mother is a stay-at-home parent who is frequently exasperated and troubled by Calvin's antics. It's been said that she used to work, but her job was incredibly stressful. She was used to it, so she was the one best-suited to stay home and deal with Calvin. (However, Calvin's father is the person who said this, and he may have been joking.)

On the rare occasions when she is not reacting to Calvin's misbehavior, she seems to enjoy quiet activities, such as gardening and reading, although it is almost always disturbed or interrupted by Calvin. The "daily disciplinarian", she is frequently the one forced to curb Calvin's destructive tendencies; once, she allowed Calvin to smoke a cigarette in order to teach him how unpleasant smoking can be. She also usually seems sympathetic towards her son's relationship with Hobbes, and a few times has found herself speaking to Hobbes as well (although she refers to one instance as "talking to a stuffed animal"). She has a serious trouble getting Calvin organized when Rosalyn is about to come for babysitting. She also sometimes seems to have problems getting Calvin to go to school.

Personality

Calvin's mother teaches Calvin the dangers of smoking the hard way.

Calvin's mother is a relatively down-to-earth, beautiful and sensible person whose attitudes serve primarily as a foil for Calvin's outlandish behavior.

She, like Calvin's father and despite her beauty, may have been a party animal in her college days. In one strip Calvin looks through a college yearbook and pictures and asks his father who the “bimbo” in the picture is, to which he responds,“That ‘BIMBO’ is your mother!”. This also implies that the two were fellow students and/or juvenile "crushes".

Calvin takes after his mother in his dislike of the outdoors, and the two despise their annual camping trip. In one strip, while driving to the lake to go camping Calvin points out a hotel and suggests the family stay there for a week, relaxing while a maid cleans up after them and buying fish from a store to pretend they went camping and fishing if anybody asks, and his mother quickly agrees and urges his father to pull over.

On one occasion she tells Calvin that she hopes he has a kid that puts him through what he put her through, and he responds that "Grandma says she used to tell you the same thing.", indicating that she was much like Calvin growing up.

Relationship with Calvin

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A strip that not only references to Calvin's grandmother, but also sheds some light to the fact that Calvin may have inherited his personality from his mother.

Although Calvin's behavior drives his mother crazy, she still loves him as a son. When Calvin was lost on a trip to the zoo, she became sick with worry, and was thrilled when his dad brought him back. In one strip, she is shown chasing Calvin shortly before bedtime, tickling him whenever she catches him; in the end, Calvin explains to his father, "Her plan backfired, Dad. Now I'm all wound-up, and Mom's the one who has to be put to bed." She has also stepped in when his father goes too far with his own private jokes, going so far as to say "I know somebody who's going to get a lot of coal in his stocking, buster."

She frequently scolds her husband for his sarcasm in dealing with their son. She is sometimes able to calm Calvin down when he is in a bad mood, offering peanut butter crackers, comic books and other treats to cheer him up. At one point, Calvin became ill and his mother tended to him from the start, beginning in the early morning when Calvin throws up. Though she is almost always shown criticizing Calvin's behavior, it is revealed that she may have been problematic when she was a child as well.

Although she loves him very much, Calvin's mother has sometimes made references in some strips that she wanted a daughter instead of a son. She has even, in a fit of rage, blamed her husband for giving her the chromosome that gave birth to Calvin. Calvin himself has even theorized that she thinks of this; after she turned down Calvin's offer of helping around the house with unnecessary carpentry, he stated: "Mom wanted a girl. I just know it."

Dinner

Calvin dislikes his mother's cooking, to the extent that she must trick him into eating it, often by telling him that it is something disgusting, such as "monkey heads", or "spider pie".

She has used Calvin's love for hamburgers as an advantage in one instance; after Calvin takes a single lick of food and flails about on the floor pretending to die, she put him back in his chair and explains to him, lightly frustrated, "Oh, knock it off, Calvin. It's hamburger casserole. There's not a thing in there you don't like." Calvin, awestruck that the meal is hamburger, takes a bite and explains in detail that it is not so bad and that he's suppressing the "gag reflex". His mother, understanding the underlying meaning, patiently replies, "Good. I'm glad this is such a hit."

Moving green glops of food occur in some strips; after Calvin's mom served him oatmeal, Calvin then thrashes around the house chasing after the glop of oatmeal. After Calvin's mom is exasperated by the entire mess in the kitchen, she shouts to Calvin's dad "It's all your fault we didn't have a sweet little girl! Your stupid chromosome, not mine!" The final panel shows a confused Dad going back to reading his book. A thought bubble above him reads "I just live here".

An exception to Calvin's thought to his mother's dinners occurs when Rosalyn cooks dinner for him in a strip.

Behind the Scenes

Calvin's mother in her first appearance.

According to Bill Watterson, Calvin's mother never received a name because she was only important to the storyline as the mother of Calvin. Watterson has said he regretted the fact that the strip mostly shows her impatient side, but he also tries to show other aspects of her personality by what she is doing when Calvin invades. She keeps a clean house, as she is occasionally found refinishing furniture or painting the walls. She also seems to have an active social life, writing letters and leaving phone messages for friends, even inviting friends over for tea on occasion. Needless to say, Calvin tends to interfere with all these things. One particular example is that before her, Calvin 's dad, and an unnamed friend played cards, Calvin punched six holes clean through an ace. As they were playing the game, the friend remarked "Hey! What's wrong with this deck?!"

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