I loved Charlie Brown for his insecurity, for admitting that he was unfit for the game of life, for providing consolation in a literary world of supposed role models. A Charlie Brown christmas 50th anniversary Charles M. Schulz shirt. Here, at last, was a kindred spirit, one who served as a rebuke to pretty much every other character in books or TV shows I came across as a kid. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, for instance, were always overcoming adversity; Charlie Brown was endlessly defeated by it.

A Charlie Brown christmas 50th anniversary Charles M. Schulz shirt

The Five were forever exposing adult crime rings, taking ludicrous, healthy dips in early springtime ponds and eating seven square meals a day. Charlie Brown was, like me, too full of self-doubt and torment to be part of the Blyton gang. A Charlie Brown christmas 50th anniversary Charles M. Schulz shirt. That afternoon, Charlie Brown meets Peppermint Patty and talks about the girl at school, but before he can mention her red hair, Peppermint Patty jumps in and tells “Chuck” that she knows exactly who he is talking about, and will set up a meeting with her. She then tells Lucy that “someone” wants to meet her at the ball park that night. Lucy agrees, thinking the “someone” is Schroeder, and Peppermint Patty returns to tell Charlie Brown everything is all set. When the two meet each other at home plate, they respond with “You! Bleah!”

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I have a photo from the early 1970s that has mystified me for decades. It shows me in the Alder Coppice junior school football team which has just won the Dudley under-11s six-a-side trophy. But how could I have been in that team when I kicked like Charlie Brown? Perhaps the trophy – or me – were pasted in using an early version of Photoshop. Those are the only possibilities that make sense. Je suis Charlie (Brown). One reason Peanuts endured from 1950 to 2000, and was published in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and 21 languages, reaching a global audience of 355 million, was that all 17,897 of the four-framed comic strips that bore the name were drawn by that rare thing – an adult who didn’t want to systematically airbrush what childhood was really like.