peanuts

Man, this has been a tough week. I had just gotten somewhat used to looking in the newspaper and seeing Peanuts strips from the 70s instead of new ones when another wave of tributes started appearing in the national media marking last Sunday's final Peanuts. Then, Sunday morning, I awoke to even sadder news – Peanuts' creator, Charles M. Schulz, had passed away Saturday night.

Whew. That's a lot to take, especially for a Schulz afficionado like me. I've been a Peanuts junkie ever since I can remember. As a kid, I devoured Schulz's books, rereading my dog-eared paperbacks until I knew every frame. I had a habit of walking down Main Street after I got a haircut so I could go into the bookstore and buy Peanuts books. I eventually started growing my hair and stopped frequenting that bookstore when the proprietor began looking at me like I was going to steal something, but I never outgrew my Peanuts obsession.

To this day, even though it's been years since I was a daily Peanuts reader, everyday life repeatedly reminds me of storylines from those old strips. In general, my Peanuts obsession has been harmless. From time to time, however, it can prove a little embarrassing, as most people don't have the same kind of photographic memory of Peanuts history that I do. Consequently, I often get into conversations like this:

Me: OK, this is exactly like the time when Snoopy was trying to get to Petaluma for the Arm-Wrestling Championship of the World, remember?

Someone else: [blank stare]

Me: Oh, you know – when he and Lucy ended up having this arm-wrestling death match kind of thing, right?

Someone else: [confused look]

Me: Oh, good grief. Doesn't anyone have any culture anymore?

My Peanuts obsession didn't spring from nowhere; as my Grandmother would say, I came by it honestly. That is, my parents are devoted Peanuts fans, too. Before I was born, they had dogs named Violet and Snoopy. The dog I had when I was growing up was named Schroeder, for crying out loud; I didn't name the dog.

As cheesy as it sounds, that's what makes all of this so hard to take – the fact that Peanuts has always been a given in my life, something I could depend on and which never disappointed. I don't know about you, but I'm short on those sorts of things in the first place, and I'm not a bit happy about having to give this one up.

As sad as I am about the end of Peanuts, however, I'm glad that no one is going to take over the reins from Schulz. Peanuts was an intensely personal project, and no one could ever continue the strip with the purity of vision the Schulz gave it. That indivisibility of Schulz and his work has been hitting me like a ton of bricks this week. The man died as newspapers around the world were preparing to print his final strip. That fact alone speaks volumes about how much of Schulz was in his strip and vice versa.

I'll be honest – I don't know how to wrap this up. I'd like to end on an up note, but I don't really know how. Remember when Charlie Brown, after suffering another crushing defeat, would walk around with a word bubble over his head with no words in it, only a big, black, scribbled cloud? That's how this makes me feel.

Rats.