Peanuts

I just went to a talk where a bunch of our school's advisors and deans and whoever else talked about grad school and the application process, and it has basically placed me right on the verge of a grad-school-application-induced nervous breakdown. Not cute.

So! I have decided to take a break from listening to Hole while making an overly-complex and comprehensive list of every single grad school I could possibly apply to (with my own personal rankings and really crazy reasons why I would or would not want to go there, mostly based on whether or not I would need to magically be able to afford a car and weird obsessions I have with certain cities that I haven't actually spent any significant amount of time in) to make this post about my other favorite comic, Peanuts!


Just like Calvin and Hobbes, I can't really pinpoint exactly when I started loving or reading or having any exposure to Peanuts. If I had to guess, I would say that I probably first saw A Charlie Brown Christmas before I was actually able to talk or understand anything that was going on, and I definitely used to read the reprints of Peanuts in the newspaper when I was a kid.

I remember when I was in the fifth grade (Ms. Wilson's class), one of the seating charts ended up putting me in the back row of this side-part of the classroom with this kid Grady (my mom called him "the All-American Wonder Boy" because he was blond and tall and played every sport ever) and my friend Nick (hi, Nick!), and it was a disaster. We basically just sat there the whole time and made snarky comments to each other, and Ms. Wilson would always say things to us like, "quiet in the peanut gallery," or whatever.

Okay, so, until I looked it up approximately ten minutes ago, I totally thought that the term "peanut gallery" was a reference to Peanuts. The really complex explanation that I came up with in my ten-year-old head was that because Peanuts occasionally makes somewhat snarky social commentary, a group of people sitting and making snarky comments (think Lucy) was a "peanut gallery" because it was like a "gallery" of Peanuts characters sitting and saying sassy things about whatever was going on.

Apparently, this is not the case, and the story behind the term "peanut gallery" involves actual peanuts. I still like my explanation better.


Basically, I relate everything in life to Peanuts. My favorite character was always Schroeder, and Linus always reminded me of my sister, because he carries his blanky with him everywhere and sucks his thumb. Snoopy only served to fuel my incessant begging for my parents to get a dog, and I always kind of assumed any pet dog would also have a bird-friend like Woodstock. And finally, there was an exceptionally dirty guy at Haverford last year that María and I would call Pigpen.

But most of all, I associate Peanuts with Christmas wonderfulness! We always listen to the A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack during Thanksgiving dinner (Thanksgiving is the day that it officially becomes socially acceptable to allow Christmas music and decorations and everything else Christmas to permeate every aspect of your life), so just hearing it makes me happy and hungry. Obviously, everything about Peanuts is just incredibly adorable!

Love, Jillian