This One’s for You, Charlie Brown

This is one of those posts that I have been meaning to write for a long time, a long time meaning ever since I started this blog or maybe even before then. 

The Peanuts comic strip and characters have meant a lot to me since I was a kid. My relationship with Peanuts is mostly happiness, but with a little bit of agony.

Happiness is when mom turns on Blues Clues for your younger siblings and one of the first ads that plays is for the Peanuts home video collection..agony is when it’s over two minutes later. Watching Blues Clues might be fun for the younger ones but you know what you really want.

The Music Hall

Happiness is going to the babysitter who has all of those Charlie Brown and Snoopy videos and getting to watch them. I remember when I was in first grade, my pediatric dentist decided to perform an unscheduled tooth extraction and I ended up being sent to the babysitter. But then I got to watch You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown on her TV in her bedroom and drink soup for the rest of the day instead of going to school. Not bad at all.

Happiness is also renting a Peanuts flick every once in a while. It’s also getting to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV in early December. Happiness is Mom finally buying It’s the Pied Piper Charlie Brown on VHS and then watching the documentary at the end.

Agony is seeing the clips in the documentary of all the Peanuts shows you haven’t watched.

As you can see, some of these are very well-worn.

Happiness is getting a stack of vintage paperback books of Peanuts strips for your enjoyment for Christmas, reading them all through in one day and then reading them again and again. It’s checking the comics section of the local newspaper every day for the daily reprinted Peanuts strip along with Garfield and Frank and Earnest (and, for a few years, the strip that my dad wrote twice weekly, but that’s another story).