It's the holiday season and it seems like Charlie Brown is on TV all the time. Why is a character who is, by definition, such a loser a beloved figure in our imagination? After all, we live in a world where results are valued above processes, where Christopher Columbus has a holiday and Andrew Jackson is on money. It is strange, when there is more information easily available than any other time, that losers fade more and more quickly from our collective thoughts.
So why is it that we love so dearly a cartoon boy who fails so often at baseball, at kite flying, at love, and, of course, at kicking that stupid football. Why do we love a character who is defined by his suffering. His creator, Charles M. Schulz posits, "Charlie Brown must be the one who suffers, because he's a caricature of the average person... Winning is great, but it isn't funny." This is what I too have long suspected; that we love Charlie Brown because we identify with him. There is a part of us that remembers our own failures and Charlie Brown is that part incarnate. No one ever laughed at a man walking down the stairs and not falling down.
Even though we all love him, losing was getting old. Even Charlie Brown had occasional triumphs. It was starting to feel like we'd never get to kick the football. This week felt different though. We answered all the questions except for one in the first round correctly, naming the character in an action trilogy whose name was revealed to be David Webb (Jason Bourne), and knowing the first names of the two female characters in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (Stella and Blanch).
And the second round went just as smoothly. We knew which team Babe Ruth was a member of when he hit his first home run (The Red Sox). We knew the name of the town where the Wright brothers first flew (Kitty Hawk). We knew the highest two digit prime number (97). We couldn't guess the brand of cigarette that advertised on the original Flintstones cartoons (Winston).
Still, when the Host asked the final question, we were tied in first. We were feeling pretty good. If we could get the final question and bet the max, we could win for the first time in what seemed like forever. This was the question: "Match the following four countries with their populations, Countries: Vietnam, Italy, Chile, Algeria Populations (in millions): 17.46 38.48, 60.92, 88.78." We debated the answer pretty furiously among ourselves. It was certainly the kind of question that lent itself to multiple answers, but at last we came to an answer that I was happy with: Vietnam 88.78m, Italy 60.92m, Algeria 38.48m, Chile 17.46m. Now the only question was what to bet.
There was a lot of disagreement on the team about the correct answer. So I knew that if we bet the maximum and got the answer wrong, about half the team would be unhappy. I also knew that if we bet zero we could still win and would likely get some prize. It had been a long time since we won overall, and several times betting aggressively on the final question had cost us. I decided, therefore to support betting zero even though I was quite happy with our answer. It was the political choice but not necessarily the politic one.
As it turned out we had the answer correct, which was disappointing. Even more disappointing, two teams jumped ahead of us. We finished in a tie for third. In cases of a tie the Host asks a tie-breaking question with the closest team winning the prize. The question was, "Over their first 16 years of their franchise, how many regular season games have the Tampa Bay Rays won?" We estimated that they won 68 games per year giving us an answer of 1088 wins. The real answer was 1195. We got pretty close. Unfortunately our opponents were either Tampa Bay Rays experts or great guessers. They said 1150, meaning we missed a total of two questions, got the final question correct and still missed the stupid goddamn football.
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