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You’re a good man, Charlie Brown

People unfamiliar with the Peanuts oeuvre often think it’s about a funny dog named Snoopy. These people are mistaken. When Charles M Schulz started this gig in 1950, his mind was not on the star beagle, but on his human, Charlie Brown. Today, the Peanuts merchandise – everything from toys to kitchen utensils – remains popular. The text, not so much. These days it’s difficult to find many people under 40 who really grasp the intellectual and metaphysical underpinnings of the material. I was raised in a Schulzian household. The comic books and collections were always to hand. The movies were anticipated with wild enthusiasm. Peanuts should be essential reading for all children, but, I will be the first to own, it may not be the most child-friendly reading. Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe, like all good literature, it can be appreciated on numerous levels and reinterpreted as you develop. First it’s cute, then funny, then it’s the answer to life’s conundrums and humdrums. This is my 200th column. That’s nearly four years. And, much in the manner of a Peanuts character, I wonder what I’ve done with all your time and Newsday’s space. In a 1961 CBC interview, Schulz said there’s a little bit of Charlie Brown in all of us. He is melancholy. He’s often lonely. He never really seems to win at life (or love or sports). “Good grief,” is what Charlie Brown would say to that. But I think Schulz missed something: I think there’s a bit of all the gang in all of us. Or maybe it’s how I first understood I was many people at the same time. One of my favourite Charlie Brown panels reads: “Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, ‘Why me?’ then a voice answers, ‘Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.’” It’s the randomness of life that does him in. In theory, every bad thing, every worry or sorrow, could be happening to someone else. For Charlie Brown, if there’s low-hanging misery to be had, he’ll walk straight into it. Like Lucy always pulling away the football just as he’s about to kick it. Or being plagued by a kite-eating tree. (That would so happen to me if we had them around the Savannah.) For all this, he keeps trying with life. And if you’re a kid who eats lunch alone, that’s a real triumph. On the other paw, his pal Snoopy – and a more confident dog you will not find – Snoopy is the life of the party. At ease with humans and bunnies and birds. Escaping into his alter ego as a WWII aviation hero. Of all the characters, only Snoopy has this vast and grand imagination. “Be yourself. No one can say you’re doing it wrong,” he once said. No truer words. One of the great lessons from Schulz’s style is its succinct truths. Snoopy is that rarest of things: a real individual. Also, beagle identity is very important. He’s beagle-proud, and I wonder if that’s why it’s so easy for him to accept the world as it is. His selfness is never compromised. Linus Van Pelt, Charlie Brown’s truest friend, a man for all seasons, is also seldom compromised. But he suffers in other ways: he’s a thinker. There are funnier, sweeter and more accessible quotes, but I think this is the most Linusy Linus quote: “There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.” Yeah, give that to your five-year-old. But why not? We need to be more prepared to think, even if thinking only complicates things more. Life is so much tangled string. Sometimes we need a Linus moment when we can pause and think it through. Next up at bat (there’s a lot of baseball in Peanuts), Linus’s cynical, sadistic, sarcastic sister, Lucy Van Pelt. Lucy knew about cancelling people before cancel culture became a thing. She’s sassy, she’s mercenary. Lucy – who better? – runs the five-cent psychiatric service. It was 1959 when that set-up first appeared. 1959. This was pop culture for little folk in 1959. And people wonder why I harp so much. Lucy once said, “I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.” I could do this all day, except I can’t. Hey, Sally. Hey, Schroder. Hey, Marcie and Peppermint Patty and Woodstock. You’re a bunch of weird little guys, but you’re there for Charlie Brown. And they were all there for me. And isn’t that plenty? The post You’re a good man, Charlie Brown appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.