Peanuts - what happened...

I'm doing some research right now that involves a couple hours a day of staring down a microscope at stuff. Mostly it's pretty dull, so I kind of let my mind wander while I do it.

This is what I was thinking about this morning: I wonder what would have happened to the Peanuts kids if they had grown up.

And then I began to make scenarios in my head. I realize for some this is near-blasphemy, but considering that some (notably the writers of Family Guy) have speculated on Marcie and Peppermint Patty, I think maybe I'm not doing too much wrong here.

First of all, Linus. (Who was always my favorite). He wound up going on to college and working on a degree in philosophy and theology. A couple years later, Sally followed him to the same school - she being still in love with him. Sally pursued a degree first in Home Ec, but then moved over to Design when she found she had a knack for textile design. During this time she and Linus reconnected, and he realized that she had shed a lot of her earlier selfishness and pettiness and grown up to be quite a lovely young woman.

They were married the year before Linus started graduate school. During his work on his Divinity degree, Sally supported them by designing fabric for a major manufacturer. Later, Linus got a professorate at a small Midwestern liberal-arts college. Once he was granted tenure, Sally concluded that what she really had always wanted to do was be a wife and mother, so with Linus' blessing, she gave up her design business and they started a family, ultimately having two daughters and a son. They became sort of the quintessential faculty family, and lived pretty much happily ever after. Their son grew up to work for the State Department; one of their daughters became a veterinarian and the other, a schoolteacher.

Marcie went to college to study biology with the ultimate aim of being an RN. She and Charlie Brown (who was at the same school, studying English) dated briefly but decided they weren't that compatible. Later, while she was in nursing school, Marcie found that Franklin was studying to be a pediatrician. They fell in love, were married, and after they got their degrees, Marcie helped her husband in his practice. When they could get away from the practice for a time (and every seventh year, when Franklin took a sabbatical and had one of his partners mentor a new pediatrician, to take up the slack) they would go to Africa to provide health care for children in developing countries.

Charlie Brown started out majoring in English. However, in the middle of his junior year, he decided that what he really wanted to do was to be a barber like his father. So he dropped out, went to barber school, and ultimately took over his father's business. A few years later, the "little red-haired girl" (whose name was Tess) took her two sons in for a haircut at Charlie's barber shop. It turns out she had weathered an unhappy divorce and was raising her two sons alone while working as a second-grade math teacher. She and Charlie got to talking, she brought her sons back for later haircuts, and eventually Charlie worked up the courage to ask her out on a date.

A year and a half later they got married. Charlie petitioned to, and was ultimately allowed to, adopt her sons so he could be their "official" father. He continued to cut hair and Tess continued to teach. On the weekends, he coached his sons' soccer team (it turns out he was better at soccer than he was at baseball) and he served as their Boy Scout troop leader. He and Tess live pretty much happily ever after, and certainly more happily than Charlie ever anticipated he would.

Peppermint Patty turned out to have skill at sports photography. She was hired by Sports Illustrated to cover NBA games and she wound up being romantically linked to a couple of famous players - one from the Chicago Bulls and one from the Boston Celtics. However, she was never one to kiss and tell, and being a photographer, she knew all the tricks for avoiding paparazzi.

Lucy took a business degree and ultimately wound up serving as Schroeder's manager. Schroeder traveled the world as a concert pianist and Lucy traveled with him as a manager and caretaker of sorts. However, the romantic relationship she hoped for never blossomed - Schroeder turned out not to be interested in women, but he was too shy and, with a misplaced sense of caring and not wanting to break Lucy's heart, he never told her. So she spent her life following him, expecting he would eventually fall in love with her, but she could never quite see the signs that should have tipped her off. (Lucy's business acumen was much better than her skill at personal relationships).

Pig Pen moved to New Mexico and went into politics. He served for a number of years in state government despite his appearance and hygiene challenges. In fact, he turned a rival's criticism of him on its head, and his slogan became: "Pig Pen - dirty on the outside, but clean where it counts" because he was known for his honesty and transparency. Later, he served as a university provost.