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Rosalyn, sometimes called Roz, and the Baby-Sat is a supporting character in Calvin and Hobbes. She is Calvin's babysitter and a senior in high school. Calvin thinks she is evil, although she is simply strict because of his rebellious behavior. The main reason why Calvin dislikes Rosalyn is that she always sends him to bed by 6:30, which Calvin thinks is way too early for curfew (and he's not wrong). In her final appearance, Calvin behaved, and she was nice, mostly because she agreed to play Calvinball with him and Hobbes.

Role and Personality[]

Rosalyn is Calvin's babysitter, a smart and responsible teenager. She also appeared for a short amount of time as Calvin's swim instructor. She also has a boyfriend named Charlie. Calvin, on one occasion, picked up the phone on the same line while Charlie had called Rosalyn and proceeded to tell him to break up with her and said she was a "sadistic kid hater". Rosalyn's idea of effective babysitting is a 6:30 bedtime for Calvin, and she has little patience for his attempts to rebel against her. Her methods were usually extreme, and could even be considered abusive by today's standards. She would frequently attempt to control Calvin with threats, or just locking him somewhere (such as the garage) to get some time away from him. Calvin will often freak out whenever he hears that Rosalyn is going to be babysitting him, in one instance screaming in protest non-stop for an entire strip (prompting his Mom to say in the last panel, "For goodness' sake, Calvin! Take a breath before you pass out on the floor!")

Another instance is when Calvin asks his Dad to get out the magnum, or at least a "wooden stake and a mallet." In one strip, she orders Calvin to go in the house and to his room, only to receive the reply "Jawohl, mein Führer!" ("Yes, my leader!") and the Bellamy salute, infamous for being used by the Nazi Party. He often tries to find ways to prevent Rosalyn from babysitting him, such as hiding his Mom's shoes or attempting to mail himself and Hobbes to Australia. He also once asked his dad to get out a gun because Rosalyn was at the door.

A few times, Calvin seems to have gotten the upper hand on Rosalyn by doing something rather provocative and insidious, which she finds rotten and will often threaten him to stop what he was doing. Once, he stole her science notes when she was studying for a test at school the next day and planned to flush them down the toilet. But he didn't really do it. The next time, he tricked into stepping out of the house and locked her outside so he and Hobbes could have fun while she couldn't get back in, going so far as threatening to break a window if he didn't let her in. The next time she came, he dressed up as Stupendous Man to try to attack her without breaking the rules of giving her an easy time tonight, but she wasn't fooled one bit. After that, she forced him out of bed to write a full-fledged confession for the attack, which he still denied. Each of these left her enraged, but she always found a way to get Calvin to bed after all the trials and tribulations he put her through.

9-13

Rosalyn gets the hang of Calvinball.

In the final Rosalyn story, however, their traditional war is averted by a game of Calvinball, in which Rosalyn proves to be a formidable player, and once again trumps Calvin with a clever move in the last panel. This display of extensive imagination showed her to be not entirely lost to the dull world of adulthood, and this trait allows her to sympathize with Calvin's needs and ultimately control him much better than his mother ever could, such as in the same storyline as above, in which she allows him to stay up half an hour past his bedtime, and plays Calvinball with him, two actions which Calvin's mom would be sure to avoid (ironically, on returning home, Calvin's parents refuse to believe that she was able to play a game with him, and assume she is making a joke). In the strips where Calvin had locked Rosalyn out of the house, his parents got mad at him and his mom pointed out that locking Rosalyn out of the house wasn't just mean, it was dangerous -- if something bad had happened to Calvin (like if he had gotten hurt or there had been a fire), Rosalyn wouldn't have been able to help him. Hearing this (and finally realizing the severity of what his actions), Calvin is forced to apologize to Rosalyn for what he did and admits to Hobbes later that night that he honestly does feel really bad for all the nasty stuff he did, with Hobbes adding that them eating all those cookies didn't help.

In nearly all the "Rosalyn stories", Rosalyn is shown demanding advance payment and raises the wage from Calvin's parents, supposedly because she needs the extra money to pay for college or for the hard work she puts in to control Calvin. (For exactly the same reason, she briefly appears as Calvin's swimming instructor.) They are reluctant to pay such exorbitant rates, but even more unwilling to have Calvin ruin their outings. Therefore, they always give Rosalyn her raise. It's been pointed out by Calvin's parents that Rosalyn's the only babysitter willing to put up with Calvin long enough for them to actually go out together.

In at least four stories, Rosalyn telephones her boyfriend, Charlie, to cancel prearranged meetings which she cannot fulfill. (Charlie remains as an unseen character). Calvin sometimes breaks in and urges Charlie to stop courting Rosalyn, asserting that Rosalyn is either sadistic or insane, or both.

Additionally, in the Revenge of the Baby-Sat, during the story arc in which Calvin and Hobbes threaten to flush Rosalyn's notes down the toilet, Calvin and Hobbes refer to themselves as, "The Baby-Sat." The name is probably derived from the fact that Rosalyn is the babysitter. Therefore, Calvin and Hobbes are the recipients of the babysitting, and call themselves the "Baby-Sat."

Calvin's nicknames for Rosalyn:[]

  • "A barracuda in a high school senior suit"
  • "Baby Sitter Girl"
  • "My sadistic babysitter"
  • The Baby Sitter from the Black Lagoon

Gallery[]

Roz1st

The first comic Rosalyn was ever featured in.

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