"OK, we've got a sign for our secret club, so now we need to find a secret meeting place. I know! We can set up a card table in the garage! That would be perfect for drawing up maps and stuff! Hmm, there's not much room with the car here. Let's push it into the drive. Shouldn't you ask your Mom to move it instead? Nahh. She won't care if we push it out. C'mon. In the past, you've been a remarkably poor judge of what your Mom cares about."
"We all want meaningful lives. We look for meaning in everything we do. But suppose there IS no meaning! Suppose life is fundamentally absurd! Suppose there's no reason or truth, or rightness in anything! What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters? I guess there's no harm in a little wishful thinking. Or suppose EVERYTHING matters. Which would be worse??"
"Help me push the car out of the garage. I can't budge it myself. I still think you should ask your Mom to move it. Then she'd probably say no, and we won't have the garage for our clubhouse! But if you DON'T ask her, we'll get in trouble. We won't get in trouble! Every time you say that, we go. Mom wouldn't care about these things if she wouldn't keep finding out about them."
"Look, stop being such a baby and help me push the car into the driveway. We'll move it 10 feet. What could possibly go wrong?! Whenever you ask that, my tail gets all bushy. Oh, knock it off. Mom will be glad we did this ourselves and didn't bother her. Well, she DOES hate to be bothered. Right. Now push! Push! Hey, the car's not stopping! STOP! STOP! I think you're Mom's going to be bothered."
"STOP THE CAR! IT'S STILL ROLLING! The driveway must be slanted downhill! It's going faster! WHOA! WHOA! Jump in and pull the emergency brake! I can't catch the door! Oh, no! Oh, no! It's going to go into the road! Don't follow it! LOOK OUT! WILD CAR!!"
"The car is rolling into the road!! What if someone hits it?!? LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! THERE'S NO ONE DRIVING!! THERE IT GOES!! I can't watch! GRUNTCH Nobody hit it! It just went into the ravine across the street! Hooray, we're dead."
"What are we going to do?? We'll never get the car out of the raving. Should we act surprised, like the car just rolled here by itself? Maybe Mom and Dad would fall for that. Or maybe they won't even notice if we just don't say anything. You think? I can be packed in five minutes. OK, I'll try to get the maps out of the glove compartment."
"Hi, Mom! Hobbes and I are back! Do I have any clean clothes? I mean, I'm just wondering. I'm going to make myself a few dozen sandwiches! Uh... I'm REALLY hungry! No need to get up, or look, for example, out of the window! Just stay where you are for another 10 minutes! What's the matter with you? AAUGHH! Ha ha ha ha! Nothing! Uh, why do you ask??"
"I got a couple of sandwiches made, but I think Mom was getting suspicious. Are you packed? We'd better go! Should I take the yo-yo or the bubbles? ... or both? HOBBES, COME ON! We'll be lucky to get out of here with our LIVES! Mom's bound to look outside any minute now and see the car in the ditch! If we're not in the next county by then, it's curtains! Let's GO! Where's a freight train when you really need one?"
"POOF POOF POOF POOF POOF OK, (POOF)... I think we've got enough of a head start. We can rest a minute. Do you think your Mom has seen the car by now? Probably. She's probably called Dad at work, and he's probably on his way home now!"
"Well, we're surely in some other state by now. Let's stop here. Boy, it never once occurred to me that I'd be spending the rest of my life on the lam. Speaking of lamb, what kind of sandwiches did you bring? How can"
"What's going on. I wonder. Why are all those cars slowing down as they go by? Gosh, did someone have an accident? It looks like there's a car in the ditch! ... but I don't see anyone by it. And how on earth did they go in straight backward? To do that, the car would've had to come... ...right...out...our...driveway!"
"What's that sound? I don't hear anything. There! Something is crashing through the brush! It It sounds big! Maybe it's a bear! There are BEARS out here?? Climb the tree! Climb the tree! If you ask ME, tigers are the only ferocious animals the world really needs. 'Boy, 6, killed by bear! Parents saved the trouble.'"
"Do you think we're safe? Should we climb higher? It's hard to say with bears. There it is! The bear's coming out of the brush! Oh no! It looks like it's on its hind legs! Bears stand up only when they're really mad!! Wait, that's not a bear. That's your Mom! AAUGHH! EVEN WORSE! CLIMB HIGHER! CLIMB HIGHER!"
"THERE you are. Come down so I can talk to you. No. You'll kill us. We're running away. I'm not going to kill you. I just wanted to find out what happened. Are you OK? Was anyone hurt? No one was hurt. We were pushing the car into the drive and it kept rolling. The car didn't hit anything? It just went across the road and into the ditch. That's when we took off. Well, the tow truck pulled it out, and there's no damage, so you can come home now. First let's hear you say you love me."
"Boy, Hobbes, isn't it funny how things sometimes work out? Mom and Dad saw right away that what happened to the car was an accident. They were so relieved no one got hurt that all we got was a lecture on safety and asking permission. They didn't even raise their voices. Parents are inscrutable, huh? Send their car over a ditch and you don't even get yelled at. ...but try keeping live worms in your Dad's... Let's not talk about that, OK?!"
"My Mom and Dad are not what they seem. Their dull appearance is part of their scheme. I know of their plans. I know their techniques. My parents are outer space alien freaks! They landed on Earth in spaceships humongous. Posing as grownups, they now walk among us. My parents deny this, but I know the truth. They're here to enslave me and spoil my youth. Eary each morning, as the sun rises, Mom and Dad put on their earthling disguises. I knew right away their masks weren't legit. Their faces are lined - they sag and don't fit. The Earth's gravity makes them sluggish and slow. They say not to run, wherever I go. They live by the clock. They're slaves to routine. They work the year 'round. They're almost machines. They deny that TV and fried food have much worth. They cannot be human. They're not of this Earth. I cannot escape their alien gaze, and they're warping my mind with their alien ways. For sinister plots, this one is a gem. They're bringing me up to turn ME into THEM!"
"Playing a record? I'll show you something interesting. Compare a point on the label with a point on the record's outer edge. They both make a complete circule in the same amount of time, right? Yeah... but the point on the record's edge has to make a bigger circule in the same time, so it goes faster. See, two points on one disk move at two speeds, even though they both make the same revolutions per minute!"
"Hello? Hi Dad! Calvin, is this important? Oops. Wait. Foget I called you 'Dad', OK? This isn't Calvin. Calvin, I've got work to do. I'll see you when I get home. OK? Goodbye. Wait! Do you have any crimes to report? Phooey. This secret identity stuff is hard to get used to."
Want to see something cool? I've got a baby tooth that's just hanging by a thread... and I can turn it all the way around with my tongue... or make it swing from side to side! See? See? They're all just jealous.
"BLOGG! Ukh huggablukk Spiff! Spiff?! Blecckh blecckh! We join our here, the courageous Spaceman Spiff, as he flees the awful bug beings of Zartron-9! Spiff's only chance is a daring strategy of head-tohead combat! Our hero swings around and readies his computer-guided death-ray blaster! ..tum te tum tum... I wish this booted up faster. C'mon, c'mon. There we go. Let's see. Get the 'file' icon... double click on 'blaster'... Hmm, pull down 'settings'... get the dialog box... click on 'rays'... select 'death'... hit 'OK'. Hey, what's the matter? Why didn't my screen change?! Hit 'F1' for 'help'... 'About blasters'... nope... 'Calibrating blasters'... nope... ' 'charging the fizzler'... no... 'fizzling the charger'... no... 'incineration guidelines'... oh, this is annoying! Oh wait, I didn't enter the number of volts! That's it! Type in 'gazillion', hit 'OK'. What?! 'Invalid setting'. DARN! Go back to 'volts', highlight 'gazillion', press 'Delete', type in... KRAKK. SPIFF IS HIT! HE'S GOING DOWN! Hey, why won't this boot up? Has somebody been playing with this thing?! The whole thing went down, Dad. Luckily I jumped clear at the last second."