I met him in the newspaper
My favorite character of all time isn’t in a literary novel, a blockbuster movie or a TV show. He is, in fact, a cartoon beagle named Snoopy. I assume you know him, too, right?
I met him before I could read. When my brother and I were little, our friend John would often come over on Sunday afternoons. His parents and our parents were friends, and we all went to the same church. We are what I call “heart family.” John was 5 years older than my brother and 12 years older than me, and we adored him partly because he entertained us while our parents were doing boring, grown-up things like mopping and taxes.
The first thing John did when he got to our house was pick through the sections of the Sunday newspaper until he found the comics. He read them aloud to us, always starting with Peanuts, so his favorite became ours, too. And it was easy to fall in love with Snoopy because, somehow, even though he didn’t talk, he was the floppy-eared heart and soul of that iconic comic strip that ran for 50 years.
I’m allegedly a grown-up now, but I still think of Snoopy as a model for how to be a human. He was loyal and supportive to Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts kids, especially when they were discouraged. He became best friends with a little yellow bird named Woodstock, even though they were from different parts of the animal kingdom (and probably didn’t vote the same).
And Snoopy instinctively knew the importance of fun. Sometimes he’d run off on adventures – as almost all beagles do – but he also found fun at home on top of his doghouse, pretending to be a World War I Flying Ace fighting off the Red Baron. And when he was hard at work at his typewriter, wrestling with words on a “dark and stormy night,” I felt a writerly kinship with a dog who doesn’t speak words yet says so much.
When I see images of Snoopy wearing sunglasses and his red “Joe Cool” sweater, I always think of my brother Greg, who died when I was 27 and he was 34. Like most little sisters, I grew up knowing that my brother was the coolest human on Earth. I still think of him that way because he had a subtle swagger and a gift for making people laugh when they needed it most. Sometimes, when I’m effort-ing all over the place yet still feel like a middle-aged dork, I think of my brother and Joe Cool and remind myself to stop trying too hard. To just “be.”
When you grow up loving books, many of the characters in them become a permanent presence in the nooks and crannies of your mind – names like Hester Prynne, Harry Potter, Hamlet, and newer ones like Elizabeth Zott and Marcellus. I still think about them as if they’re real people I spent time with.
But of all the fictional characters I’ve met so far, Snoopy has given me one of the most enduring examples of how to live. I’ll distill it down to 10 one-word commands learned from the life of a beagle born in the funny pages: Play. Laugh. Imagine. Create. Eat. Dance. Nap. Protect. Help. Love.
These are the lessons I’ll spend my life practicing, hoping to become as honest, silly, imaginative, and kind as a dog named Snoopy.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her book is available on Amazon.
