Like many little boys, Calvin has a vivid imagination. There are times when his ideas and his vocabulary seem suspiciously appropriate to the mature man drawing the strip and quite a bit beyond the reach of a primary school pupil. But the emotional highs and lows seem quite right, although come to think of it, my emotional highs and lows in my 8th decade might not be all that different from what they were in my 1st.
The other day, Calvin found his horoscope in the newspaper and was convinced that he was going to have an especially good day. There was the upsetting line about him being irresistible to women that day and the prospect of engendering affection in his girl neighbors and schoolmates was yucky and off-putting. Suppose they kissed him!!!
But the rest of the prediction was about how well his plans would develop that day. He looked forward to that with happy enthusiasm.
But, whoa! All sorts of things did not go as planned. The day ended with yet another bath before bed. In a funk, he vowed that he would pay no further attention to horoscopes, having clearly established that they lacked basic validity.
Communicating with a cartoon character who is no longer being drawn is stumping me right now but I do have a message for Calvin. The day in question seemed like a typical one to me. Granted it wasn't spectacular but it was normal. I want to bring up the question: What if the horoscope was correct? What if the gods, the stars, the spirits had all sorts of malevolent plans for the little guy but were prevented from real damage by the power of the horoscope?
That's the thing about a day. You can't live it several times over, under varying experimental conditions. A day that seems low on the quality scale might be rather good, given what could have happened, what nearly happened. Similarly, a lovely, shining, stellar day might have actually had the potential to be far better except for various factors that dampened things down.
It is not only all relative but it is all mysterious.
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