Office comedy for kids

By Frank Visco
Collegian Editor
February 7, 2007

I’m not one of those people with vivid memories of his childhood. That being said, I do remember sitting across the kitchen table from my father on Sunday mornings, watching as he read the Philadelphia Inquirer and dined on one of the “adult cereals” in the house (i.e., Raisin Brain or Special K). I also remember the yearning I had to mimic my father’s routine. I remember sitting directly across from him, eating my cereal (a sugary one like Fruity Pebbles or Captain Crunch) and reading my “newspaper,” the funnies.

I enjoyed this activity with dear ol’ dad, but I found one thing to be tedious: the funnies weren’t that funny. Sure, I liked Peanuts, Blondie and Calvin and Hobbes, but they were more cute than funny. Meanwhile, I was still a few years away from appreciating the comedic style of Doonesbury (too densely political) and The Far Side (too out there), and thought most of the other stuff just outright stunk (Family Circus, I’m looking at you). As a result, I fell in love with what I considered to be the funniest strip in the funnies: Dilbert.

On paper, Scott Adams’ Dilbert sounds like it could’ve gone right over my head as a child as a comic strip that satirizes corporate America. However, the humor in the strip is accessible to all ages; the strip offers great slapstick, extremely worthwhile observations, perfectly constructed jokes, and brilliant comic creations.

On top of this, I think Dilbert struck a chord with me because it took some of the classic archetypes from Peanuts and turned them into adults interacting in the workplace. Dilbert is a fully realized version of what Charlie Brown would most likely become: a decent guy who’s unlucky in life and spends most of his time with his pet dog (except in Dilbert, the dog talks). Meanwhile, Alice is Lucy all grown up—hot tempered and vindictive—while Wally seems to be Linus unhinged. Just as Linus was an oddball (an extremely smart kid who carries a blanky), so, too, is Wally (a smart man who decides to take advantage of a hefty company buyout policy by dedicating himself to getting fired).

Believe me, the strip is hilarious. I had many of the comic strip book collections as a youngster and I can still remember the glee I took from their humor. One particularly comedic nugget that has stayed with me since my youth came from Wally, who bemoaned having to wash his bath towels by saying, “Ever time I get out of the shower, I’m the cleanest thing in my house. The towel should be getting cleaner ever time I use it.”

Overall, Dilbert is a great comic; perhaps the last true great to be created for the newspaper world. I will never forget the laughs it brought me, and the relief it gave me each time I sat down on Sunday mornings with my dad.

viscof1@lasalle.edu