So I come upon a Peanuts from the Sunday comics, one of the strips from the series about when Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown as he tries to place-kick it, that was just reprinted in the papers, which reads as follows:
Lucy: I know you don't trust me, Charlie Brown . . . You think that I'm going to pull this football away when you come running to kick it . . .
Lucy: Well, here's a signed document testifying that I promise not to do it . . .
Charlie Brown: ?
Charlie Brown (to himself): It IS signed! It's a signed document!
Charlie Brown (to himself): I guess if you have a signed documenbt in your possession, you can't go wrong . . . This year I'm really going to kick that football!
Charlie Brown (attempting to kick the ball, missing, flying skywards and dropping the document): AAUGH!
Sound of Charlie Brown falling to the ground (as the document settles into Lucy's outstretched hand): WUMP!
Lucy (perusing the document): Peculiar thing about this document . . it was never notarized!
Charlie Brown (lying on the ground): * sigh *
My question is - how could Charles Schulz have been so precient so as to foretold the strategy so successfully (maddeningly?) used by the spouse in Alfieri v. Guild Times Pension Plan?!? There, a spouse was successfully able to assert beneficiary status, notwithstanding having signed a waiver, because of a defect in the notarization. See also Lasche v. George Lasche Basic Profit Sharing Plan; Hagwood v. Newton; Butler v. Encyclopedia Brittanica, Inc.; Burns v. Orthotek Inc. Employees Pension Plan and Trust (all being other examples of spouses trying to use this charming li'l strategy). Leave it to Mr. Schulz to identify this truth-is-stranger-than-fiction approach* to notarized documentation.
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* As Mark Twain said (or maybe this is a paraphrase), "The only difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be credible."
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