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.

Fragments: "reflected fame"

(First of all, an explanation to newer readers: once in a while, I like to make up stories. I haven't done it in a long while, haven't had any ideas. I like to post some of the better ideas I have here, just for the heck of it, seeing as they're really not long enough or detailed enough to flesh out into real stories but I'd like to record them somewhere a bit more public than the hard drive of my computer.

Oh, they're mostly non-autobiographical but a few of the minor facts of this one sort of are autobiographical, even if the narrator is the opposite gender from me).



...I was tooling down the highway, in the field van. The students had finally persuaded me to let them turn the radio on. Normally I don't; I don't drive with the radio on in my own car because I find it distracting, and driving the superannuated 15 passenger vans my department provides for our conservation students requires every bit of concentration I have. But it was a warm day, exams were coming up, and I figured it was best to be a little nice to the students.

They tuned it to one of the college-rock stations - the kind that play a mishmash of stuff, some old Clapton, some weird alterna-bands I've never heard of, some really poppy stuff. A woman comes on, singing in kind of a folky style. I think I know her voice but don't say anything until after the song ends.

One of the students - Bill - makes the comment about Desiridata's hotness, about what a great singer she is. A couple of the other guys chime in and a few of the women in the class express a certain envy for her lifestyle.

So I decide to drop the bomb.

"I knew her in high school. She went to high school with me."

General sounds of disbelief from the class.

"No, really. She was called Margret Enderby then. When we were in school I thought she was interested in going the pre-med route in college. I guess that changed when someone told her she could sing."

"But....she's like 25?!?" Chase exclaimed.

I made a dismissive sound with my lips. "Please. She would have had to have been an infant prodigy. She graduated the same year as I did, and I'm almost 40."

Groans from the guys in the bus. Another fantasy destroyed, I suppose. Perhaps it was mean but there really wasn't any going back now.

"Are you sure? I mean, couldn't there have been some girl at your high school that you just thought became her? Or maybe Desiridata is her daughter?"

Ouch.

"No, they had a big article on her in the alumni magazine a couple years back..."

The kids start exclaiming and asking about "alumni magazine." Well, crap.

"Yeah, my high school has an alumni magazine." I added, more softly, "I went to prep school and the alumni are scattered all over the nation."

I don't like to let that fact out; I know enough of the tougher conservation guys already regard me as somewhat of a pansy-ass given my background and the fact that I don't discuss my romantic exploits. But I couldn't just stop; I had gotten so far in my explanation of how Desiridata was actually a remarkably well-preserved middle-aged woman. Like Madonna, you know?

For that matter, I've had students express disbelief that I'm nearly 40. And I admit there's a certain fun in proving to them that I am. I suppose a lot of them - coming from the backgrounds they do - see guys who are completely burned out and beaten down by life by the time they hit my age, and I'm kind of just now hitting my full maturity. (I've claimed to students who wanted to know how I stayed so young that it was because I never married or had children. I think some of them may see me as somewhat of a libertine for having made that statement, though their assumption is pretty far from the truth - I live a damn near monkish life, and frankly I like it that way).

"So Dr. Holcomb," Chase said, leaning over the front of the seat, "What was she like in high school? Was she hot then? Did you like her?"

"Did you ask her to the prom?" called one of the women in the back and the bus erupted in laughter.

The truth is, I didn't know Margret that well in high school. She was way beyond me in looks, and true to the old saying that girls mature faster than boys, she was already essentially an adult while my friends and I were still swapping Spiderman comics and trying to imagine the grossest Slurpee flavor possible. So I decided on the truth:

"Margret was a very beautiful girl in high school. She was kind of distant, the sort of person you didn't approach. I wound up asking Pam Butzler to the prom - she had braces and glasses and was the only girl I thought would go with me."

"So did you make it with Pam Butzler?" Leave it to David to immediately go the most inappropriate place possible.

But what the hell. Again, I could tell the truth: "No. It turned out one of the things in the punch at the after-prom was something she was allergic to. She started throwing up and I had to drive her to the hospital in my dad's old Crown Victoria. I wound up sitting in the ER with her for a half-hour before her parents could get there. Then I just went home."

Some of the guys groaned. Some of the women made that sound - that sound where you know you've done something OK in their eyes, that you're not a total cad or loser.

"Would you ask Desiridata out if she were around here today?"

"No. No, I have no desire to try to make high school the way I wanted it to be by reliving it." I realize some of them don't understand that yet, but they will.