Growing up, I would always grab my stepfather's newspaper off the front stoop and run as fast as I could up to my room, lock the door behind me, turn right to the comics section and reacquaint myself with Peanuts friends. Every day I would laugh and laugh at those three panels. Most of the time I didn't understand what was going on, but I figured hey, it's in the comics section: it HAS to be funny! Peanuts was created, of course, by the immortal Charles Schulz. I use the term 'immortal' metaphorically, as Mr. Schulz's body betrayed him completely with the old stroke/colon cancer one-two punch. He decided to retire, and the night before his very last strip ran, after 50 years of non-stop Peanuts, Mr. Schulz died in his sleep. Within a span of a few hours, his career and his life were over. As I write those words, I can't help but think of Brett Favre possibly dying soon. Favre didn't retire from football so much as it was yanked, pulled, ripped and beaten out of his gnarled, weathered hands. For 20 years, football was his sole purpose for getting out of bed and the last thing he thought of before he went to sleep (aside from, perhaps, accosting female team employees and fetishizing his father). Now that that is all over for him, will his frail body finally give out in his sleep? Will he be like that cartoonist, going through the motions in the twilight chapter of his career, throwing flapping interceptions in much the same way that Schulz would release rambling brain-addled cartoons before finally succumbing to his new-found pointlessness? Let me leave you with this image. Brett Favre waits for the snap downfield. The ball is hiked to Lucy van Pelt. Favre strides toward the ball, ready to kick it through the uprights. At the last instant, Lucy yanks the football away. Favre flies backwards, landing flat on his back in a shallow unmarked grave. Then Linus covers Favre with a shovelful of dirt. Now imagine that that football was not a football, but Brett Favre's own life energy being ripped from his waiting foot. In addition to also representing a football. I hope he does not die though! That would be very sad. 