Calvin's Dad

My parents were not great censors of literature when my sisters and I were growing up, but they drew a line at the Berenstein Bears books. There was nothing wrong with the stories themselves, they told us; the problem was Papa Bear. You may recall Papa. He was the overall-clad grizzly who represented an unfortunately typical depiction of Dad: the good-natured but clueless bumbler whose patriarchal reign is propped up by a competent wife and tolerated by children who are really the cleverest ones of all. Fathers were patronized as idiots enough by pop culture, my parents reasoned, for them to add willfully add another wink with our picture books.

I had an argument recently with a friend who criticized Calvin's parents as being too sarcastic. Her description was accurate to a point, particularly when it comes to Calvin's dad: He can be droll; sometimes openly,and sometimes over his son's head (see above).

To my mind a little dark humor is not an unhealthy response to the exasperation that comes with a kid like Calvin:But even more to the point, to criticize dad's sarcasm is to overlook one of the real delightful--and encouraging--things about his character: He's smart. He's a man with a sound enough ear and a nimble enough mind for irony. He's thoughtful, disciplined, and unbothered by the fact that he's not cool. In short, he's a real grown-up, a man who knows he's a man. He may not be perfect, but on the spectrum from Homer Simpson to Atticus Finch, he's a lot closer to the latter.