Sometime yesterday AJ discovered two old books of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons on my bookshelf and he's been sitting in some corner of the house reading one or the other of them or asking me to read them to him for much of the last 24 hours.

Although I've never been a particular comic fan, I always loved the adventures of the precocious six-year-old and his tiger who got into all kinds of outrageous trouble, along with a dose of near-academic philosophy (for those not familiar with the strip, you can see some examples here). AJ finds the adventures of Calvin and Hobbes (which he continues to pronounce "hob-bess," even though he knows that's not really the way you say it) hilarious and wants to act them out -- a fact that has me quaking in my boots.

I am finding, however, that some things don't seem quite as hilarious as I used to, or at least not hilarious in the same way. They seem a lot more true. Calvin and AJ would have gotten along quite well, I think. AJ's stuffed pal John Tiger Cat, who had been relegated to a bookshelf in recent weeks, having been demoted from top-of-the-bed status, has been pressed into service to play Hobbes to AJ's Calvin. I'm really hoping they don't try some of Calvin's more enterprising ideas. Like parachuting out the window with a blanket from his bed. Or rigging up a bucket of water over his bedroom doors to catch intruders who are inevitably his parents. And many of Calvin�s activities have been part of AJ�s general repertoire for a long time. His dinnertime attitude, in particular, is mighty familiar.

Calvin's fantasy life is a huge part of the strips. One of his alter egos is Spaceman Spiff, a futuristic explorer of undiscovered space regions. This was familiar terrain to AJ, and cemented his identification with Calvin. But he was really taken by Calvin's other favored persona, Godzilla. "Mommy, who's Godzilla?" AJ asked. I had to explain, "He's a monster that was in some movies a long time ago. He looks kind of a like a giant T-Rex." AJ got a sly grin across his face as he watched Calvin build Tokyo in his sandbox and then stomp it to pieces. An hour later or so, I heard the sound of collapsing Legos and, "Don't eat me, Godzilla!"

>If you ask AJ why he's so taken with Calvin, he will tell you, "He's so cute. I like it when his mouth looks like a triangle." This is a face Calvin makes when he's feeling cocky, a pointy smile he beams when he knows he's won.

But really, I think AJ feels like he's reading about himself. Calvin is close to AJ's age and, like AJ, is the only child of two parents who seem to work at home in an unnamed town in Middle America. Calvin, like AJ, has a big vocabulary and a bigger imagination and a pretty good sense of the way the world works. Aside from Calvin's regular requests for firearms and his tendency to throw himself into danger, from which he inevitably emerges unscathed, AJ could have worse role models.

Still, I think I'll be checking carefully before I open his bedroom door.

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