Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words

Let's say you discover something that you really, really like (and at this point, I'm mostly referring to music or books as opposed to, say, cults). In my experience, most people will have one of two reactions:

1) They'll want to share this incredible find with everyone they know and will celebrate increasing popularity of the item
2) They'll want to keep it covetously to themselves and may inwardly resent increasing popularity of the item

For whatever reason, it seems like far fewer people experience the first reaction. Even people who aren't necessarily Gollum-like with their music or book tastes will still typically avoid going out of their way to share the items they're most passionate about. Typically, we'll wait for someone to admire or comment on such an item, or to directly ask for a recommendation, before we'll willingly share our Precious's.

Conversely, the second of these reactions has actually gained fame, if not popularity, in recent months by being heavily associated with the so-called hipster mentality. A whole subculture has been, more or less, founded on the concept that your off-beat, indie social prestige should depend on the obscurity of what you like. (Or so I hear. I have yet to meet someone who admits to being a hipster.)

Partially because I'm sick of people talking about hipsters and equally sick of people talking about how sick they are of people talking about hipsters, I'd like to re-brand Reaction #2 as something other than "the hipster mentality."

Specifically: "the Calvin and Hobbes mentality."

I don't actually remember when my sister and I started reading the Calvin and Hobbes comic books, but I do know that it was at an age when I would often sit on my dad's lap. I would read the strips to him and laugh at the jokes that I understood. I can't recall ever being the slightest bit confused by the comics, but at this point I know that I couldn't have possibly truly comprehended, say, some of the more complex ruminations on deconstructionist sidewalk art. (On the other hand, a certain strip about Calvin's mom and an onion did teach me at a surprisingly early age what anthropomorphize meant.)

By the time we reached teenagedom Cathi and I had amassed every Calvin and Hobbes "collection" and a handful of "treasuries," save for Yukon, Ho! which, if I recall, I didn't purchase until around 2001 because I'd already read it at the library a few times.

I love the Calvin and Hobbes series for a lot of reasons not worth getting into at this point, yet over the years I never brought it up in conversation or recommended the books to anyone--mostly, frankly, because they never came to mind. As a budding English major, comic books weren't usually the first thing to pop into my head when friends asked for a book recommendation. Then, since no one I knew ever mentioned them, I began to subconsciously assume that Calvin and Hobbes was one of those things from the late-80s-to-mid-90s that no one else but my family really paid attention to. Like David the Gnome.

And then I went to college.

I'm not sure what catalyzed it, but at some point during my tenure at IWU I discovered that no one hasn't read (and subsequently become obsessed with) Calvin and Hobbes. I have become extremely hard-pressed to find someone unfamiliar with the series. Try it at your next social gathering. Crack a joke about a transmogrifier. Everyone will laugh.

Yet no one talks about it. It seems to be one of those "Preciousss" items that everyone on the planet prefers to keep to him- or herself. The Calvin and Hobbes mentality.

In keeping with the mentality, I was initially surprised and a little disturbed by the discovery of Calvin and Hobbes' ubiquity. (After all, I just found out that an entire library of what I thought were private, family childhood jokes would actually be comprehensible to a nation's worth of college students.)

Lately, though, I've come to appreciate the Calvin and Hobbes mentality, at least when it comes to Calvin and Hobbes series. I like to think that no one talks about it because everyone who reads it shares the same emotional reaction that compels us not to talk about it. And if people love to talk about incredible or interesting things, I have to believe that only sheer brilliance can prompt universal silence.