Peppermint Patty - Notable Character Traits

Notable Character Traits

Peppermint Patty is noted for her persistent habit of profoundly misunderstanding basic concepts and ideas that most people would consider obvious, leading to ultimately embarrassing situations. For a long time she seemed unaware that Snoopy was a dog, referring to him as "the funny looking kid with the big nose." This was a recurrent gag in the strip until an incident (featured in a series of strips from March 1974) in which Patty declared she was through with school and planned to spend the rest of her days staying in "Chuck's guest cottage" (Snoopy's dog house). By the end of this particular story arc, Marcie, in a fit of exasperation, angrily informed Peppermint Patty exactly what the "funny looking kid with the big nose" actually was, which left Patty in stunned shock for several strips. In a later phone call to Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty finally accepted the truth: "Let's just say my pride had the flu, okay, Chuck?"

Peppermint Patty has brown chin-length hair, and she has freckles on her face. She almost always sports a pair of sandals, even in winter weather. In one series of strips, in which she was forbidden to wear the sandals in school, it was revealed that these were a gift from her father because she was "a rare gem." For a time, Patty also put her candy cigarettes in her sleeve.

She also thought a school for gifted children meant that she would get free gifts if she enrolled. Likewise she once confused a dog obedience school with a human private school, going so far as to enroll and graduate with the other dogs. It was only later, when she tried to use that diploma to show that she did not have to go to regular school, that she discovered that she had publicly humiliated herself for a meaningless honor. Although initially angry with Snoopy, who had recommended the school to her, she forgave him after she got into a fight with the cat named "World War III" that lived next door to Charlie Brown (having mistaken it for Snoopy in a cat suit) and Snoopy came to her aid.

She is widely known for receiving a D− grade on every test or assignment in school (in 1999, the final full year of "Peanuts", her teacher presented her with a certificate naming her to the "D-Minus Hall of Fame"). In one comic strip, Patty got a Z-, which she called "sarcasm". In a series of strips in 1984, Peppermint Patty was held back a grade for failing all of her classes—only to be allowed to return to her old class when her old desk in front of Marcie started to emit snoring noises, leading kids and faculty alike to suspect that the classroom was haunted by a "snoring ghost".

Peppermint Patty's bad grades are possibly exacerbated by her tendency to sleep through class. This was explained by the fact that her father works late, and Patty is too insecure to sleep until he returns home. In one series of strips, Marcie suggests that it is Patty's unrequited love for Charlie Brown (see below) which causes her to fall asleep. At Marcie's urging, Patty also went to a sleep disorders treatment center to be tested for narcolepsy; once again, though, it was determined that staying up too late at night, and not narcolepsy, was the cause of Patty's falling asleep in class.

Peppermint Patty hired Snoopy twice to serve as her watchdog so she could sleep better at night, but both incidents ended disastrously. The first time, Snoopy was unable to get off Peppermint Patty's waterbed in the guest room to catch the burglars who were robbing the house at that very moment, and the second time, Snoopy was distracted by a girl poodle who became his fiancee (the engagement was called off on the day of the wedding), leading Peppermint Patty to angrily call Charlie Brown in the middle of the night and demand that he come to her house to serve as watchdog in Snoopy's place. Besides guard duties, Peppermint Patty also retains Snoopy's services as an attorney, once even enlisting his help to openly defy the school's dress code. The first strip in which the character's full formal name, Patricia Reichardt, was mentioned, published January 15, 1972; her formal name appeared again at least one more time, in the February 5, 1993 strip, in which she reads to Marcie an ad she has placed in the paper:

• First panel: PP: See Marcie? My ad is in the paper..
• Second panel: PP: "Help wanted.. attractive young lady can't remember history dates."
• Third panel: PP: "Doesn't understand fractions. Call Patricia Reichardt at number below.."
• Fourth panel: PP: What do you think, Marcie? M: You are extremely weird, sir.

Patty is also a star athlete, especially in baseball, where her team regularly trounces Charlie Brown's squad. In the first series of strips in which Patty appeared in 1966, she actually joins "Chuck's" team as its new pitcher, relegating Charlie Brown to the outfield. However, she quits in disgust after only one game; despite tossing a no-hitter and slamming five home runs, her new team lost, 37–5, because of their somewhat porous defense. In another occasion she let Charlie pitch the last throw of the game (Patty pitched a no-hit, no-run game and were leading 50–0 on the 9th inning, 2nd out, 2nd strike), only to see Charlie lose the game. The final score was 51-50.

Peppermint Patty lives with her father and enjoys a particularly close relationship with him, even though he apparently has to do a lot of traveling. He refers to his daughter as his "rare gem", a nickname with which Patty is extremely pleased. Her mother apparently died long ago, for Peppermint Patty has no memories of her. No siblings are ever mentioned, thus Peppermint Patty is presumed to be an only child. She has often lamented her lack of a mother to help her prepare for skating competitions and such:

Peppermint Patty: "Skating mothers are like stage mothers and swimming mothers. They grumble and complain and gossip and fuss, but you really need them!"

Marcie: "How do they get that way, sir?"

Peppermint Patty: "Early rising and too much coffee."

Peppermint Patty mentions her mother over the course of the television special He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown, but Schulz repeatedly stated that the situations presented in the cartoon adaptations are not canonical to the strip.