Charlie Brown and the Case for Insanity

(why lucy still pulls the ball, and maybe why she should)

I semi-promised I wasn’t going to write about therapy stuff here, but this post actually starts in my office. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had at least three couples use the same myth to describe their relationship:

“I feel like Charlie Brown with the football.”

You know that story. You probably are that story. I definitely am from time to time, though I’m not actually sure if I’m more Lucy or Charlie Brown.

There are dozens of Peanuts panels depicting the same scene: Lucy holding the ball just so. Charlie Brown racing toward it with hope.
And then…

She yanks it away. He flips. He flails. He lands flat on his back.
Every. Single. Time. (At 52, my back literally hurts just thinking about it…my back, not the comic strip.)

Charlie Brown… what’s his deal? Why doesn’t he ever learn? Like ever? Also, Lucy sucks. Why does she suck so bad? As far as we know, all Charlie Brown did to piss her off was exist.

It’s the textbook definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

So why does he keep trying?

Short answer: So Charles Schulz could pay his mortgage.

Schulz never let Charlie Brown kick the football. Not really. He believed it violated the natural laws of the Peanuts universe. If Charlie Brown succeeds, he ceases to be Charlie Brown.

But Schulz flirted with the rules just enough to make me feel a little, er… insane. There are three known “endings” to this myth.

The first is from an animated special where Lucy doesn’t pull the football away. She keeps her word. But Charlie Brown, trained by the muscle memory of betrayal, misses the ball and kicks the shit out of Lucy’s hand.

Then there’s the Spider-Man crossover in which our friendly neighborhood hero, fed up - I imagine - that Lucy was working out her unresolved trauma on his buddy, snatches her up in a web so Charlie Brown can finally kick the damn ball. You know how much I love my super-heroes, but this is just weird.

And then—maybe the strangest resolution of all—there’s Rerun.

In one of the final strips, Lucy asks her little brother Rerun to hold the football. Charlie Brown does his thing, but we don’t find out what Rerun does. Neither does Lucy and it’s kinda cathartic, but also weird.

That’s… a lot.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do with these alternate endings. Is Charlie Brown still Charlie Brown if he kicks the ball. I don’t really think the Spider Man thing counts. It certainly isn’t canon.

The other two are just confusing. I think I need Lucy to pull the ball away. I think maybe we all do. I think it helps us remember.

Once Charlie Brown finally kicks the football, it might resolve the story, but it’s me that remains unresolved. I have to actually think about what it means to put a stop to the pattern? Any pattern

This is part of why I’m good at my job. I have some real empathy and even appreciation for the insanity. I have real compassion and curiosity about unresolved trauma.

And even though Lucy sucks, I still kinda love her. She’s the villain, sure. But she’s also the keeper of the myth. The editor of disappointment. The one who reminds us that resolution might be nice, but it’s also kinda weird sometimes, and unsettling, and maybe even boring.

So…the next time a client brings this particular myth into my office, I’ll be ready. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll figure out how to learn something from the boy who never did.

kZB