“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Why me?’ Then a voice answers, ‘Nothing personal. Your name just happened to come up.’” – Charlie Brown, as written by Charles Shulz

As I was sitting down to peck out this week’s column, I heard my daughter remark from another room, “Charlie Brown must not be very smart. He shouldn’t keep trusting Lucy to hold the football for him to kick.”

Her third-grade class had watched “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” a couple of days earlier, so Charles Schulz’s running gag must have stuck with her into the weekend. But she brings up a good point. Why doesn’t Charlie Brown ever figure out Lucy will pull the football back every time?

Well, the obvious reason is Schulz was drawing a comic strip, and he wanted to elicit a little chuckle from us readers when we see the failed elaborate scheme or the unfortunate set of circumstances that would lead to Charlie missing the ball and landing in a frazzled heap.

We always knew what was coming, but, of course, Charlie Brown always thinks this will finally be the time life breaks his way. This brings up another reason to which we may not have given much consideration. We might not actually want Charlie Brown ever to kick the ball.

In a December 1999 interview on “Today” after failing health forced his retirement from the “Peanuts” comic strip, a wistful Schulz told Al Roker, “(Y)ou know, that poor kid never even got to hit the football. What a dirty trick. He never had a chance to kick the football.”

Schulz would die a few weeks later on the day before his final “Peanuts” comic strip ran in most newspapers.

Charlie Brown actually kicking the football in one of the last few printings of “Peanuts” certainly would have been a sweet and surprising moment, especially since the world already knew the comic strip was reaching its end. Maybe let Charlie Brown triumph for once in his life.

I think what prevented Shulz from traveling that route was he instinctively knew that giving Charlie Brown a victory lap at the very end would not be authentic in the little world he had created and shared with us.

In a strange way, kicking the football really would not have been fair to Charlie Brown – as a fictional character – at the end of his 50-year story arc.

We don’t connect with him because he is winsome and charming or even because he is an outcast, Rocky-esque character who defies his many doubters and outworks his opponents to become the victor.

There are examples of those characters filling both works of fiction and our real world. Charlie Brown is different, and that is what gives him his je ne sais quoi.

As a kid reading the funny papers or watching the holiday cartoon specials, Charlie Brown was not my absolute favorite character. Snoopy was always funnier, cuter and more exciting. Yet, as I got older, I realized Snoopy was the neon sign that drew you in, but Charlie Brown is what kept you invested.

I would never be in a dogfight with the Red Baron in blue skies above Belgium, but I would come to understand not quite fitting in with the world around me, the touch of melancholy life carries and, yes, even being the occasional blockhead.

None of us may be able to articulate these thoughts and feelings as a kid, but we still have a sense of them. It is only with life experience that you come to realize why Charlie Brown is the heart of this ragtag group of friends with oversized noggins.

Charlie Brown must always keep trying to kick the football and must always have the football yanked away at the last possible second because he represents all of us who share similar experiences in life from time to time.

Unlike Charlie Brown, we at least do have sporadic victories, but much like him, many of our dreams and aspirations lie just beyond our reach, and it remains unclear to us why that has to be the case.

But we never quite give up, and perhaps some of our inspiration comes from Charlie Brown. He is ultimately both courageous and an optimist. If he can hold on to hope despite all evidence to the contrary, then we can carry on through a life where unknown pain and failures await.

In “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Linus tells Charlie Brown, “Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you’re the Charlie Browniest.” Quite the compliment.