Having heard of the spelling bee, Charlie determines that here is an opportunity to improve his self-esteem and his general lot in life. He determines that life is something you have to tackle on its own terms, rather than just sit around waiting for it to improve by itself. Contentment in life starts from self-discovery. If he sets out to enter this Spelling Bee, he will be that bit closer to self-fulfillment.
This philosophy he boldly proclaims to a sceptical-looking Lucy.
By the time the Spelling Bee arrives, his adrenaline is flowing. But he knows he can't get too carried away by events. After all, there is a lot riding on this for him.
Eventually, it is time to go to the front of the class and stand before his peers. As the event itself rushes towards him, future events are from his perspective obscured - and so as he meets his destiny head-on, a Zen-state envelops him.
But then... everything becomes, in one horrible instant, utterly real. The Spelling Bee is no longer an abstract concept or ideal. This is something actual, tangible, all around him, with the potential for harm growing with every second - and he is in the thick of it.
His failure to pass this self-imposed challenge, to spell his first word correctly, suddenly ceases to be probable and becomes, instead, inevitable.
Some say that melancholia is like a blanket - that there can be found a perverse pleasure from wrapping it around you, from wallowing self-consciously in its sadness. Charlie has yet to consciously appreciate this strange irony. There is no pleasure to be found in confronting the fact that he seems almost pre-destined to be the object of his peer group's unconcealed derision. And yet... if he is unable to consciously appreciate this, perhaps he unconsciously does so. Nobody forced him into this course of events. He accpeted it willingly. He Does It To Himself, and the world and the moment opens up into a seemingly infinite expanse of misery...
And so the Spelling Bee fades gradually into the past. Numbed by the experience, Charlie can only sit immobile, stunned into mute disconsolation. What thoughts must be tumbling horribly through his head? We don't need to ask - we can read it all in his face, that innocent expression morphing into a wibbly distortion of anxiety... of world-phobia...
And just when he thinks it's all over and done with and he can pick himself up and start going about his business, free of paranoia or bother, life again strikes a cruel blow in the form of an inseccant commentary on his failings from an aquaintance always more than eager to remind him.
Charles M Schulz. Cartoonist. Philosopher. Genius.
