Peanuts by Charles Schulz for November 11, 2018

oh, you’re ever a good listener, Lucy, and someone that cares

Give her a wooden nickel. Nickels are nickels aren’t they? Aren’t all nickels the same?

I used to think the same way but in a way she’s right (as depressing as that is), if people don’t like you where you are, there’s no guarantee they’ll like you somewhere else.

Growing up in my little rural town, jet streams were a big deal for many years. “Oh, look!” As a kid, it was fun to stand and watch them grow, the white against the blue sky. But then at that time in that place, you ran outside when a firetruck went by. Or indeed someone on horseback.

Gotta agree with Lucy on this one.

Someone should light fire to her little booth

She really makes you feel so much better, huh? (sarcasm, of course)

Maybe he’ll grow up to be one of the most famous and beloved cartoon strip artists in history.

Gaslighting.

So funny, so true

It’s too bad, on this 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, that today’s Peanuts comics is not one of Schulz’s annual Veteran’s Day strips about the WWI Flying Ace having root beers with Bill Mauldin.

Lucy is right in her own conceited, crabby way. It is like we are swimming against a tsunami of materialistic propaganda.

I’ll talk a line from the Rolling Stones. “My buddy can’t be a man. ‘cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me.. I can’t get no satisfaction.” TV ads are all about having what your neighbor has or more. Who wore it better?

It’s a matter of “If I could only get …” that car, that promotion, that degree, that house … then my life will be complete.

If you measure your success by wealth, fame, power, position or possessions then there will always one more piece of the puzzle that is always missing.

Charlie Brown’s baggage has only one name on it and it is Lucy.

CB: “The grass looks greener on the other side of the fence.”

Lucy: “Nope. Brown everywhere.”

well, you had a good reception at the end of your travel to France, Charlie Brown.

Lucy uses Charlie to project her own inadequacies. It’s she who is disliked, and who would be incapable of change no matter the situation. She’s the one needing psychiatric help, and a lot more than 5 cents worth.

She’s my ex…

I’m disappointed we didn’t get Snoopy celebrating Armistice Day. I’m going to quaff a root beer in his (and Bill Maudllin’s) honor.

This is the basis of psychoanalysis – once you have them hooked, take all the nickels you can before they wise-up. Lucy is correct though – you can’t run away from yourself.

wheres the veterans day strip that we get every year?

You know what they say: Charlie Brown could get better…provided he finds a therapist other than Lucy.

Lucy is not exactly Miss Popularity. She certainly isn’t Miss Congeniality.

What a little witch! I’d tell her to stick her nickel where the sun don’t shine!

Her strategy is sound enough, though. With the kind of advice she gives, she’s not going to have many repeat customers.

“Sometimes I get this crazy dream that I just take off in my car. But you can travel on ten thousand miles and still stay where you are…”. Harry Chapin. “W. O. L. D.”

Exactly. The last thing a psychiatrist wants is for a patient to get better. That costs them money.

this one just seems cruel on her part

My interpretation of the Lucy/Charlie Brown relationship is that her cruel treatment of him comes from a twisted and somewhat pathological place of love. She actually cares very much about him and would like to see him succeed, and she believes that her advice is the just the kind of tough-love he needs to make that happen. Yet she wants him to succeed on HER terms, because she has a need to dominate and control other people. She keeps him emotionally manipulated and abused because it’s her way of keeping him under her thumb, which she believes is the only proper way for things to be.

This interpretation of mine is in contrast to his relationship with Patty and Violet, who seem to be awful to him for no reason at all. (“Guess what, Charlie Brown! We’re having a party and we’re not going to invite YOU! Ha ha ha ha!”)