Sally Brown

Sally Brown is the younger sister of Charlie Brown in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz.

Character

Sally has flipped blonde hair with a cluster of curls and sometimes a bow in front, and she wears a polka dot dress, usually pink or blue. In the winter, and most of the time in the later years of the strip, she switched to a shirt and pants. She has a "take it easy" approach to life, preferring to slide by while doing as little work as possible. Her favorite pastime is sitting in her beanbag chair watching TV. She can be stubborn sometimes, and is usually convinced she's right until someone proves her wrong, but she also has a good heart and a strong moral sense; like her older brother she is extremely sensitive to the unfairness of life. Charlie Brown usually goes to Lucy in her psychiatric booth when he's feeling depressed, but Sally prefers to confide her troubles to the school building, which is very protective of her and will drop a brick on anyone who doesn't treat her nicely.

Sally has a lot of trouble with malapropisms, both in speech and writing. One of the strip's running jokes are all the dumb school reports she gives at the front of the class, which are frequently inspired by malapropisms and end with her feeling humiliated as all of her classmates laugh at her. Some of the more memorable reports she has given over the years include "Santa and his Rain Gear," "Handbidextrous" people, and "The Bronchitis" (a dinosaur which supposedly became extinct from coughing too much). She often struggles with homework despite Charlie Brown's patient efforts to help her, and she has a particular dislike for math, which she largely finds both intimidating and incomprehensible.

Sally has a strong crush on Charlie Brown's friend Linus. She calls him her "sweet babboo" (inspired by Schulz's wife Jeanie, who used to call him that), and when Linus says something Sally finds especially witty or intelligent, she'll express her admiration by asking, "Isn't he the cutest thing?" Her crush is a frequent source of embarrassment to Linus, but he endures it stoically for the most part, although he is sometimes driven to yell in exasperation, "I'm not your sweet babboo!". No matter how vigorously he protests, though, her devotion remains unwavering.

Unlike most of the Peanuts gang, Sally does not seem to have much interest in playing sports. On the rare occasions when she does play, it's usually because Linus invited her. She is one of the only kids in the neighborhood who has never played on Charlie Brown's baseball team, and her attempts to play catch with a football usually lead to comic results. She did join a "snow league" once, when the local adults turned snowman building into an organized sport, but her team wasn't very good. They lost one match when the referee penalized them for "improper mittens," and lost another because their snowman was offside.

History

Sally was born on May 25, 1959, with Charlie Brown receiving a telephone call from the hospital and dashing out of the house yelling that he had a new baby sister. She was given the name "Sally" a week later, on June 2. Although much talked about, and the cause for a celebration that included Charlie Brown passing out chocolate cigars, it was not until August 23, 1959, that she finally made her first appearance. In that strip, Schroeder made a comment to Charlie Brown about "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" while she happened to be playing nearby, to her great distress. As a baby Sally liked playing with empty baby bottles, which she used for everything from building blocks to bowling pins, and being taken out for walks. The latter caused poor Charlie Brown no small amount of frustration when he had to miss an important baseball game to walk her around the neighborhood in her stroller.

Like other characters such as Linus and Schroeder who were also introduced to the strip as babies, Sally grew up quickly. On August 22, 1960, she took her first steps, and in the next day's strip she fell in love with Linus for the first time. Her first day of kindergarten came on September 5, 1962. Although the first glimpse of her new school made her run away screaming, she had a wonderful day once she got there. Unfortunately, her lack of aptitude for formal education quickly became apparent, as she nervously admitted in a later strip that she was sure they'd make her go through kindergarten again because she had failed flower-bringing. Nevertheless, she did eventually complete her kindergarten years, and settled in at about first or second grade age for the remainder of the comic's run.

Trivia

• Sally wants to be a nurse when she grows up because she likes wearing white shoes.
• Sally has wanted Charlie Brown's bedroom for years. Every time he either leaves home for a while (such as going to summer camp) or talks about leaving, the first thing she always wants to know is if she can have his room while he's gone.
• Sally was the first Peanuts character to befriend Eudora, during a trip to summer camp in 1978.
• Sally was once diagnosed with amblyopia (lazy-eye) and had to wear an eyepatch for a while.
• Interestingly, it was Linus who first expressed a possible interest in Sally. In a strip appearing shortly after Sally's birth, Linus is seen scribbling calculations on a fence, and when Charlie Brown wanders by Linus asks him, "When I'm 22 and Sally is 17, do you think she'll go out with me?" When Schulz revived the joke more than a year later, though, it was Sally who actually ended up falling for Linus instead of the other way around.it:Sally Brown