on loving Charlie Brown

I would never, in a million years, say I had a “normal childhood.”  Now, I know that there are people that have had it FAR worse off than I did.  I mean, all that I REALLY faced was packing up my life and moving every couple of years…saying goodbye to my friends, switching to a new school and starting a new life…
I guess it really isn’t that simple…but we will go with that for now.

What I WAS really, REALLY lucky to grow up with was a close-knit family unit.  Yes, I yelled a lot about how my brother GOT everything and I had to buy it for myself.  How I worked through high school and he had money handed to him through high school.  How from fourth grade through high school he lived in the same place, when I…in that same time span went to 4 different schools in 3 different states…but, like I said…it is what it is…

It is why I am the way I am.

The last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about how I grew up.  Things I loved when I was little, things I still love now.  Memories.  Life experiences I have had because my parents, my dad in particularly was so intentional teaching me things that he loved and doing things that were fun for him.

THINGS THAT MY DAD DOES NOT LIKE.
Big box stores- don’t even try to use puppy-dog eyes to get him to go to Wal-Mart to go school supply shopping…he hates it there…I think it is because he gets lost in the store and used to be scared he would lose us in the store…

Making left turns- he will make three right ones to avoid a left turn…it is true.

AND…I think that is all I can think of…I don’t really remember my dad being too negative growing up…except there was that one time…

You know, when I left my backpack on top of the negatives chest…and my backpack ended up first on the driveway in the rain…and then in the pool…temper, temper…dad had to pay for those library books that were SOAKED (and a new graphing calculator) but moving on…because this post was supposed to be about something else entirely.

Over the past week my dad has posted a number of pictures on facebook that made me smile.  They are just simple little pictures of items he has collected over the years that he particularly enjoys.  You know, expensive porcelain figurines…and art made out of cigar boxes, and bottle caps…the whole spectrum…

MAKING VALENTINES- as much as I begged my dad to buy growing up…I am certain I enjoyed hand-making Valentines for my class more than filling out those “to” and “from” lines.  In later years this was replaced by making my mailbox for the J-Room Valentines celebration...

SUNDAY COMICS- This is why I decided to write today.  My dad posted a blog about Charlie Brown and Charles Schultz this morning.  He saw a “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown” dinner show last night…apparently it was pretty bad…but it made him think and write about Charlie Brown.  You know, the BLOCKHEAD…the guy whose kite is perennially stuck in the tree, the football is always yanked from his kick…and the ball ALWAYS falls just beside his glove.  I love Charlie Brown.  I always have.  I would ask my dad for the comics in EVERY newspaper.  It took me a really long time to learn that The New York Times did NOT have comics…and it was REALLY the New Jersey Star Ledger I wanted….First I would sit as my dad read the comics to me…and then as I got older I remember trying to read them to him…but reading the comics out loud is kind of an awkward thing if you are not both looking at the illustrations.  It went something like this.  “Well, Charlie Brown is sitting outside the house and Snoopy is laying on top of the dog house and there is one Woodstock in the picture and Charlie Brown says to Snoopy ‘blah blah blah’ “ It didn’t really matter what the dialogue was in the comic strip…but it took about 14 minutes to read an 8 panel comic because I thought it was necessary to fully explain the picture in each panel.  Some days my dad smiled and nodded.  Some days he feigned interest…but I very fondly remember those Sunday mornings…sometimes I even got up early enough to start the coffee and make him a cup…with half and half and sweet n low.

It feels kind of wrong to say it, but I loved that feeling on Sunday…not having anywhere to go…no Sunday school…whatever I could have been taught in those 2 or 3 hours at temple seems minimal compared to time with my dad.  It feels wrong that I now work in a place that takes those moments away from kids and their dad.  Sunday school sucks…okay… back to reminiscing…

FOURTH OF JULY FIREWORKS- my favorite with my dad!

READING TOGETHER AT NIGHT- We went to the library a LOT when I was little.  I had the speak and spell and the easy reader…all kinds of electronics that robotically told me what words I punched sounded like.  At one point I thought I knew how to read “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” but I actually had memorized it, because my dad read it to me so many times.  I know my mom read to me a TON…especially when I was really little…she stayed home with me and we went to the park…but I really remember my dad reading to me at night.  Back to the library…we would go all the time…and it seems like every time we went I left with a stack of books.  The same stack of books I had returned just a few days earlier.  My dad read me The Five Chinese Brothers and Ping the Duck and Tikki Tikki Tembo…We read those books about forty two million times each.  We had this little five and dime in Maplewood by the diner where I sometimes got to go and pick out books.  They were literally like a nickel or a dime.  I picked out the Illiad or the Odyssey when I was in like 1st grade…it was a comic version…and I remember making my dad read it to me at night.  I have NO idea what it was about then…but I knew we were reading together.  As I became a more voracious reader…that time with dad at night diminished…and I soon began reading on my own.  I would read before he came to tuck me in…and then with a flashlight for hours after he turned off the light…especially once I got my own room up in the attic (around 2nd grade?)  I love reading books my dad recommends.  I have a very different taste in books.  He loves Vonnegut and Dickens, Business books about sharks and marketing.  I did like Blink…but I would rather read the hot sellers…NYT Bestseller…or really the book with the prettiest cover (yeah, I do judge books by their jackets…it has served me pretty well).  I value reading…It is not easy for me…it takes me a long time to plug through a book and really comprehend them…but thanks dad, I really do enjoy it...

TECHNIQUE OF THE WEEK-  This was my favorite time of the week…I think he liked it at first…but as soon as I came up with a chant to demand some personal attention and art time, it became less of a highlight and more of a burden.  Early Saturday morning (probably too early Saturday morning) I could be heard chanting “teck-neek OF-THE-WEEK” over and over and over and over AND OVER again, until my dad conceded in some form to teach me something artistic.  I learned how to make masks out of gallon milk jugs and paper mache monstrosities, we took paper and crayons out around the neighborhood and made rubbings of sewer grates, drains, tree bark, and one Saturday I think we went to a cemetery and made rubbings of gravestones.  Often, seasonally the technique would be making the aforementioned Valentines cards, carving pumpkins or producing hundreds of family holiday cards.  Some weekends when my dad would not cave to a design project…or maybe even when he did and I was just bored, I would ask my dad to grade my handwriting.  I would sit and meticulously write upper case, lower case, upper case, lower case and when I had made my way from A to Z I brought them in for him to “grade.”  My stylistic expression of bubble-dotted I’s or flourished y tails usually got me points off…and even though I knew they were not technically “right” I would get irritated he graded me down…I also used to have my dad judge my coloring book pictures and grade how well I stayed inside the lines…I was a weird kid…but he always smiled and obliged…

HOMEMADE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES- remember technique of the week?  Well, usually the end of September, early October weekends were filled with creating elaborate Halloween costumes.  I was a bag of Jelly Beans one year…dad’s dry cleaning bag and some blown up balloons…I couldn’t sit down at school…I was a butterfly one year…we used my preschool art paintings to cover cardboard wings…come to think of it…that might have just been a project, not a costume…because I think that was the year my brother was born and right after “The Lindsey Room” was dis-assembled of my wall to wall artwork.  I definitely had my years of being a witch, a ballerina, a vampire…but I was the Empire State Building one year (paper mache boxes…REALLY heavy and I couldn’t get my arms around to the front to hold my trick or treat bag) and then there was the year I was an ATM… we did crayon rubbings at a Nations Bank in Raleigh to get the design just right (see the convergence of all of these techniques of the week pre-Google image search!)  Halloween was my favorite holiday with my dad…costumes, carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating…One of the hardest days of my life was when he left Maplewood for Los Angeles to start a new job…on Halloween…he missed trick or treating…I was in like 1st grade…how the heck does that still make me teary eyed.

ART DIRECTING THE HOLIDAY CARD and the family photo shoots from HELL- art directing….the best time of the year.  Photo day…misery!  I remember my dad used to go up to the attic to work on the card alone.  I remember the year with gold tape.  I remember the year he let me draw it all and photocopied it for the masses.  I remember the first year dad sent store-bought cards.  Now though, I look back and having those pictures from the first 25 years of my life as a family…all in black and white…and beautiful…I am thankful for those miserable 6 hour long, 10 rolls of film to get just the right shot…

I don’t know…I joke sometimes that I love my dad more than my mom.  I know it is not true.  I think I am just CLOSER to my dad than my mom…I like the things he likes.  I get the things he gets.  I enjoy doing nothing and anything with him.

Charles Schultz narrated once that “big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.” But my dad ALWAYS reminded me that one day my LITTLE brother would be a LOT bigger than me (he is 6ft PLUS) and that he could be my best friend…dispite our nearly 4.5 year age difference.  I am so thankful he always reminded me how important our relationship is and will always be!

You know, my dad wrote this blog today about Charlie Brown and Charles Schultz…that is really what made me think about loving the comic, and reading them with my dad, and all the other things I love doing with him...

You’re a good man Charlie Brown
You’re the kind of reminder we need
You’ve got humility, nobility and a sense of honor
that is very rare indeed

My dad is kinda like Charlie Brown.  He might not venture to say it quite like that, he prefers "go Bundy's"…but he really is.  It doesn’t matter how many times the ball gets yanked, he sets up to try and kick it again.  It doesn’t matter how many times the kite gets stuck in the tree…he tries to fly it again next weekend.  It doesn’t matter how many times the baseball team looses it in the bottom of the 9th, he always goes out to play again…and just like Charlie Brown—he is the one rallying the troops and motivating them to have a good game out there, team.

I am a better person because he helped me become this way.

Go Bundy’s.

And since I am thinking about Charlie Brown…I think we can also conclude with a bit of Happiness…

CHARLIE BROWN:
(Spoken)
I'm so happy. That little red-headed gril dropped her pencil.
It has teeth marks all over it. She nibbles her pencil.
She's human! It hasn't been such a bad day after all.

(Sung)
HAPPINESS IS FINDING A PENCIL.

SNOOPY:
PIZZA WITH SAUSAGE

LINUS:
TELLING THE TIME.

SCHROEDER:
HAPPINESS IS LEARNING TO WHISTLE.

LINUS:
TYING YOUR SHOE FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME.

SALLY:
HAPPINESS IS PLAYING THE DRUM IN YOUR OWN SCHOOL BAND.

CHARLIE BROWN:
AND HAPPINESS IS WALKING HAND IN HAND.
HAPPINESS IS TWO KINDS OF ICE CREAM.

LUCY:
KNOWING A SECRET.

SCHROEDER:
CLIMBING A TREE.

CHARLIE BROWN:
HAPPINESS IS FIVE DIFFERENT CRAYONS.

SCHROEDER:
CATCHING A FIREFLY.
SETTING HIM FREE.

CHARLIE BROWN:
HAPPINESS IS BEING ALONE EVERY NOW AND THEN.

ALL:
AND HAPPINESS IS COMING HOME AGAIN.

CHARLIE BROWN:
HAPPINESS IS MORNING AND EVENING,
DAY TIME AND NIGHT TIME TOO.
FOR HAPPINESS IS ANYONE AND ANYTHING AT ALL
THAT'S LOVED BY YOU.

LINUS:
HAPPINESS IS HAVING A SISTER.

LUCY:
SHARING A SANDWICH.

LUCY AND LINUS:
GETTING ALONG.

ALL:
HAPPINESS IS SINGING TOGETHER WHEN DAY IS THROUGH,
AND HAPPINESS IS THOSE WHO SING WITH YOU.
HAPPINESS IS MORNING AND EVENING,
DAYTIME AND NIGHTTIME TOO.

CHARLIE BROWN:
FOR HAPPINESS IS ANYONE AND ANYTHING AT ALL
THAT'S LOVED BY YOU.

(The cast filters out, waving "good night" to Charlie Brown, but Lucy stays, 
and and stands in silence for a moment before finally saying:)

LUCY:
You're a good man, Charlie Brown.

- He smiles, and the lights go down -