One of the worst birthday presents I ever received was a bunch of Beetle Bailey books. I think my mother just found them somewhere in a shed and gave them to me. I read them for lack of a better thing to do and deduced that between that and MASH the army was way too wacky a place for me. The level of depressingly unfunny in all of these is fascinating.
Also, way to point out the creepiness of childhood immortality, Loni.
PS The real Dennis the Menace had the most depressing life and his father was a piece of shit.