We're Gonna Kick That Football

A few days ago my son managed to do something I've never seen before.

He kicked his football from the other side of the yard, and it was caught by...a tree.  It looks close in that picture, but it's actually about 25 feet off the ground.

No problem!  Just use the other football to knock it down, right?

I had never seen a tree catch a kick before.  But now I've seen a tree catch a kick and intercept a pass.  I guess the beer truck can come for me now, because I've officially seen it all.

This dogwood in our front yard is now a bizarre fusion of two important recurring themes from the Peanuts comics.  It's the football-eating tree (an apocalpytic combination of the kite-eating tree and Lucy's pretending to hold the football for Charlie Brown, pulling it back at the last minute and watching Charlie Brown wind up flat on his back).

I wish I had video of the third ball.  Having caught two footballs in the tree, he changed tactics and used a soccer ball.  Standing directly under the two footballs, he threw up the soccer ball.  It hit the limb, and all three balls showered down on him.

It occurs to me that in peanuts Lucy and the kite-eating tree have something in common.  Both of them are crushers of the dreams of Charlie Brown.  Every time, he sets about kicking the football or flying his kite, Charlie Brown summons an eternally optimistic hope...and every time his hope is dashed.  He believes the very best.  He's going to kick that football.  He's going to get that kite in the air.  Bless his heart, it just never works out.

They almost took Charlie Brown away this year.  "They," of course, refers to the incarnate evil that is the antithesis of all things good.

I'm not sure why this bothered me so much.  After all, I have all the Charlie Brown movies on DVD at home, so it doesn't really matter to me if they air on broadcast television.  But word that Apple had bought them and was going to keep them off the airwaves had me in a bad place.  It just seemed...wrong.  How could we do Thanksgiving without the Peanuts special or...horrors...Christmas?!  OH THE HUMANITY!!!

Maybe it's just because I'm an old fogey.  We've always had Peanuts on TV this time of year, and taking it away is taking away a ritual I'm comfortable with.  It's nostalgia.  Maybe it's because I have an intense dislike of all things Apple and just can't square their ownership of the rights to a franchise I like so much.  Maybe it's because I'm somewhat drawn to Charlie Brown's melancholy--or how somehow at the end of each show somehow things turn around and despite his best effort to mess everything up, things turn out ok for the blockhead.

Or maybe it's because somewhere deep in my gut I feel like we need Peanuts.  Not for the feel-better ending, and not because it gives us someone to feel bad for to take our minds off our own struggles for a minute.  I feel like we need a little reminder that just like Charlie Brown, there is a wellspring of hope inside all of us.

I don't think there's one person who can honestly say everything has always gone their way.  But there are many who can say things didn't go their way...and in response they chose--they CHOSE--to believe in the best of people.  They trusted Lucy with the football once again.  They took off with the kite full of hope that this time--this time--they're gonna kick that football.

This is the triumph of the human spirit, or maybe the triumph of the indwelling Spirit. Unlike Charlie Brown, sometimes we are able to actually kick that ball or get our kite in the air.  And sometimes we wind up flat on our back with our kite stuck in a tree.  (Or, apparently, sometimes we mix up our metaphors and wind up with our football in a tree?).  But we can overcome, and we do, and we will.  We're gonna kick that football.

PS. Cooler heads prevailed, and PBS will indeed run the Peanuts specials. Whew.