He was born at the age of a mature 30-year-old, yet he is always the one the writes/forges the bogus letters for Beaver to get Beaver out of trouble.

He was born at the age of a mature 30-year-old, yet he is always the one the writes/forges the bogus letters for Beaver to get Beaver out of trouble.

I believe that the expectation that the older must function in a leadership capacity is a two-edged sword. Often it is a burden that the older doesn't want. It can also become a rock that the younger can never manage to crawl out from under.

I wan't quite old enough to catch LITB when it was in first runs, But in the 1970s I acquired a friend who was 4 years older than me, and he had a brother who was 3 years younger than he was.

And, there was just an odd dynamic between them, that I never really figured out. But even into their 50's they had a "Wally and the Beave" aspect to their personalities when they were together. The younger usually tried to beat a hasty exit whenever the older came into the picture.

Forging letters and trying to fix haircuts was the order of the day for Wally when Beaver was small. We like to think Beaver was naive, but gradually he managed to get out of most of his messes without help from Wally. Maybe the last time Wally stepped in was Substitute Father (I say maybe because I'm invariably wrong).