Guy Reams (00:00.963)
This is day 315 Lucy and the football. Early this morning I was asked professionally and politely to kick the football again. There she was down the field about 20 yards holding the football firmly in place and asking me to run up and kick it. I hesitated because I've been here before. I have stared down that same field at the same cast of characters and listen to the same promise that this time it will be different. So here I go.
I'm running down the field and getting ready to make my next attempt. You blockhead Charlie Brown. Sure enough, Lucy yanks the football away and at the last minute I go flying head over heels. This always happens and I'm always beguiled and I go along. Each time I think I'm going to knock this one to the moon. I give it everything I can and then well, we know the story. Charles Schultz was author and illustrator of the comic strip Peanuts.
Born in Minneapolis and raised in St. Paul, he discovered his love of drawing early, encouraged by a barber, father, and a homemaking mother. After serving World War II, he returned and pursued cartooning with steady resolve, launching Peanuts in 1950. The strip blended light humor and quiet reflections on loneliness, hope, ordinary struggles of life. Over 50 years, he drew nearly 18,000 strips himself.
He refused to delegate. That choice gave Peanuts a singular voice. The simple lines and spare compositions held a thoughtful, almost philosophical current that reshaped the art of comics and left a mark on our culture that I think still echoes today. Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt embodied a dynamic that many of us recognize in our own lives. Lucy is assertive, bossy, and often critical. Charlie Brown is timid, self-doubting, and vulnerable.
Their conversations and conflicts reveal the friction between confidence and insecurity. She pushes, he suffers. Yet the result is not cruelty for its own sake. Shults use their exchanges to show persistence tested and resilience formed. The humor lands because it's grounded in a recognizable human frailty. We see ourselves in this back and forth. The football bit became the most enduring symbol of that relationship.
Guy Reams (02:29.132)
Lucy holds the ball, Charlie Brown lines up with hope in his chest. At the last moment, she pulls the ball away and he lands flat. It is funny, then it stings, then it is funny again. The sequence dramatizes eternal optimism and mischievous control in three basic cartoon panels. He tries again and we admire him trying, even as we know how this will end. She sets the terms, he accepts the terms.
That is the whole predicament that we're in in life and miniature. Lately, I worry that while people remember peanuts, they are starting to forget the messages that that comic strip gave to us and its power. I grew up reading the Sunday morning comics and took for granted the understated philosophical humor that was just like the weather. Schultz loved irony. Lucy offered psychiatric advice for five cents.
cardboard booths standing in the seriousness of therapy. Snoopy perched on his doghouse as a World War I flying ace. The absurdity works because the characters take their roles seriously. That makes the contrast both funny and revealing. Having raised three children myself, I still smile at how the kids in Peanuts never seemed to understand what the adults were actually saying. The children translated the adult world into their own language.
which is perhaps what we all do. We hear the trombone sound in the background and we feel and meaning from our own experience. The Lucy and the football gag is also one of the best metaphors for business. It captures the cycle of trust, hope, risk and disappointment that leaders and teams face every quarter. Broken promises and moving goal posts, Lucy represents the stakeholder, manager or partner
who promises to hold the ball steady. Charlie Brown represents the eager contributor who commits in good faith. When the ball gets pulled away, we recognize the vendor who misses again, the partner who changes the scope, the executive who shifts priorities. It is the changed contract after the work is finished. It is the late stage surprise that knocks you flat on your butt. Eternal optimism versus skepticism.
Guy Reams (04:54.114)
Charlie Brown always believes this time will be different. That optimism is admirable and sometimes necessary. It also fuels repeated investments in projects and relationships that never deliver. Hope without accountability is not a strategy. It is a wish and wishes do not protect your backside when you fall. Power and control. Lucy controls the setup. She defines the terms. She decides the moment of truth. In business, this looks like a dominant client
a senior executive with veto power or a vendor with lock on a platform. When leverage is that uneven, your success depends on someone else's whim. That is not a plan, that is a prayer. The lesson of due diligence. Charlie Brown's failure is not only Lucy's trick, it is his refusal to change his approach. He could demand assurances, he could ask for the ball on a tee,
He could bring his own holder. He could walk away. In business, that means contracts, clear governance, defined metrics and real consequences. Optimism is good. Safeguards are better. Wisdom is both altogether. So where does that leave us? The ones standing on the field with our shoes tied and our hearts set on finally making contact with that football. When the stakes are high, it may be worth considering that the best strategy is not Charlie Brown's method of
I hope it works this time. Maybe you should not wait around for a promotion that keeps getting promised. Maybe you should not believe in the vendor who tells you, don't worry, it'll work this time. Think of how many times you've been told exactly what Charlie Brown hears from Lucy before he makes it yet another attempt. Then consider perhaps a different play. Set the terms, build the safeguards, ask for proof, or step off the field and invest your effort where the ball will still be there when your foot does actually arrive.