It Was A Shorter Special, Charlie Brown

By Rob Morris

With her usual bombast, Lucy had poured cold water over a long, happy summer.

"None of that lazing off. I've signed us all up for summer camp. The bus leaves first thing tomorrow morning."

Before Charlie Brown could respond with so much as a solid 'Good Grief', he found his mind unusually active.

"How did you do that, Lucy?"

Her fist was balled up immediately, and almost before that, her stance was a threatening one. She actually knew few others.

"What did you just say, Charlie Brown?"

Once his calm was in on something, Charlie Brown was as hard to scare as he usually was quick to panic in other situations.

"Well, you're another minor child. You can't sign us up for anything. To go away to camp, you need our parents' signatures, maybe our own, and even where it's subsidized, our parents would have to pay some kind of fee. Also, camp needs to be prepared for."

The usual rules out the door, it was Lucy who began to panic.

"YOU BLOCKHEAD! You better be on that bus or I'll make you into mincemeat!"

Charlie Brown shrugged.

"The bus driver might not accept me without being properly signed up. Even if they did, the camp would just send me, and all of us, right back. They wouldn't want to be responsible for kids their parents never agreed to send."

As Lucy prepared more bluster, even the near-automatic siding against Charlie Brown proved not enough. Patty shook her head.

"My parents are taking us on vacation to California. They've been planning and saving for it for two whole years!"

Violet was next, almost completely upending the usual routine.

"I'm going to ballet camp. No way I'm cancelling that to go to some other dumb camp."

Lucy's heart broke inside her as Schroeder chimed in.

"I have a piano tutor coming in three days a week this summer. I can't break faith with Beethoven."

One by one, all the others shot her down hard. When even Charlie Brown left with a small smirk, the swooning Lucy shook her fist at Linus.

"Well, you're going, and don't try and argue your way out, or I'll feed you that blanket."

Linus shook his head.

"Unless our folks approve, torturing me won't matter."

Lucy fell back on the floor, looking up despondently.

"I don't understand! My bossiness always carries these kinds of situations."

Linus considered her self-made plight, aiming to both protect himself from her fury while thoroughly honking her nose.

"Your forcefulness usually does serve as an excellent shield. But maybe you exceeded what even it will allow. Even if we all gave in and just accepted you signing us up, there were all kinds of things that have nothing to do with us that would have stopped your plans."

Lucy made an important realization.

"So as long as my efforts stay within some idea of common sense, I'll be alright?"

Linus nodded as he left her, treasuring the hours before she pulled herself together.

"The world isn't Charlie Brown, Lucy. What you did today was so unreal, even Charlie Brown wasn't Charlie Brown. You may be bossy, Big Sister. But the world has rules. Stay inside those lines, and things will go as they usually seem to. Stray, and the world will remind you why it's the world."

Lucy kind of faded out. The lesson is one that would stay with her.

For the most part.

SOME MONTHS LATER

Peppermint Patty pointed Charlie Brown to the front center seat in the projection room.

"Man up, Chuck! This was your fumble, and you are watching it up close and personal to bring home how much you blew that homecoming game. No dancing here, Chuck-"

She kind of winked at him.

"Unless you insist!"

"Good Grief. This isn't even unfair. This is just stupid."

Once more, he bemoaned his fate. The kiss with the girl of his dreams, he almost couldn't recall. That game, and all that went with it? That, he had seared into his young memory. Each team member paused to glare at him before they took their seats. Peppermint Patty clapped her hands.

"Okay, people! During that-NIGHTMARE-of a Homecoming Game, my Uncle was nice enough to be on the sidelines, recording the whole thing on his video camera. Would have been nice to record a victory, Huh Chuck? But now, let's review the footage from an objective angle, to improve our performance."

A lesson is never brought home harder than when it is ignored after being learned before. Lucy would have cause to regret this.

"Let's improve our performance by cutting Charlie Brown!"

The laughs that went up at that and the grumbles of approval for the idea that followed may have tempted fate, or forced it to play fair, if only this once. But suddenly, Marcie's struggles with the projector ceased, and the film was not postponed as Peppermint Patty briefly feared.

"All right, Chuck, here's your missed punt, and here's your first missed…"

The word kick was never said, but it was felt in the guts of all the assembled kids. Eyes from a distance can deceive. A camera on the ground had a harder time lying, and never to itself. Peppermint Patty stood stunned. Marcie once had to catch her as she fell back.

"That was at least THREE TIMES!"

The film ended, and the projector went off.

"Chuck, we'll settle up later—as in we all will. But right now, the guys clear out. The girls and I have to talk with Lucy about the duties of a place-kick holder. Deep regulatory stuff."

There was no doubt of what this deep regulatory stuff entailed, as every girl was punching their fist into their other palm. Lucy made an utterly ironic plea.

"Charlie Brown, help me! I don't handle being punched very well."

Charlie Brown left with the other guys. His life would never see very many moments like this, so he chose to enjoy it to its fullest.

"Then—It's your first kiss, Lucy Van Pelt!"

When she got home that night, Lucy's parents wanted to talk with her about something Linus had mentioned about her throwing him out of the house, just prior to Rerun's birth.

All her nickels were confiscated.