This is an excellent strip.
I love Lucy's direct, indignant accusation of Snoopy: "You took TWO!" Although nowhere in her counting panels does she say the word "two," which makes me wonder if the spoken-aloud counting is a sham.
If the counting is taken to be real, my explanation is that Lucy has developer her own, personal representation of the number system, which she uses internally and translates when speaking to others. When she's speaking out loud as an aid to counting however, she uses her own symbols.
The question marks (excusing the fact that there are three of them) in the last panel are a bit weird, like he's questioning now Lucy's counting system but his own inability to comprehend it.
Oh, and Snoopy has thought balloons with word balloon tails here again.
Recall that Sally developed her own "personal" number system in at least one strip. This strip is funnier, however.
ReplyDeleteIt's been found that some people actually do "visualize" numbers in a highly personal way as an aid to computation. Google "number forms" for more info.
Lucy's unique way of counting pops up in several later strips (and as Chris noted, other characters do it too). It's interesting that while the Peanuts characters can quote Scripture and are conversant in classical music, they often seem to have trouble counting to ten...
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