There are too many moments in my life when I know exactly how Charlie Brown feels as Lucy pulls that football away from his moving foot. There he finds himself, lying on his back in the grass, breathless and irritated that he has fallen for her line once again. I am feeling like that at this moment, in fact, having reread the blog post I wrote over the last several days and finding yet another error.
That post was four days in the making, a comedy of errors that would not end. I began it Thursday in anticipation of a Friday morning publish, something which never came to pass because I was too busy to finish it. It didn't happen during the day Friday either, as things went from bad to worse, and suddenly, it was Saturday, and I was caught up in the excitement of helping my lovely daughter prepare for the dance.
Last night, I salved my conscience about missing a post day, and letting down not only my own goal to write at least one blog a day, but also the readers who look forward to my thoughts, [a reality which surprises me more than it does you, I can assure you.] As I was frantically trying to get it written and published, I was telling myself I deserved a day off, having faithfully written an item every day for more than a month.
I really did finish it up late last night, while waiting for the party girl to return to her safe little cocoon. But what with one thing and another, suddenly, I was was waking up with my hand on the keyboard, blog not only unpublished, but with misspelled words and poorly constructed sentences throughout, and worse yet, missing vital parts which I had previously written and which had now mysteriously vanished.
More interesting, to my mind, however, were other lines which had been written but were incomprehensible. I spent a good five minutes trying to decipher what on earth I was talking about in one line, which came out of nowhere and made less sense than OJ Simpson's first trial. I finally gave up in disgust and just got rid of it, because I clearly wasn't heading anywhere intelligible with it, anyway. A lot like now, it seems, but I will persist, because I'm sure there's some humor in here somewhere, and heaven knows I could use a laugh about now.
I think a ghost may have been here during my unconsciousness and hacked away at my post, trying to finish it for me. That's the only explanation, and I'm sticking to it, because the alternative is that I make no sense at all, and I don't like that possibility. Although if there were a Dave somewhere that was married to one of my relatives, I'll bet he'd be the first one to say that he always knew my intellect was a sham and I covered my own ignorance with big words.
Finally, early this morning, apparently still not fully functional, [and who would be, I would like to know, when your daughter and her friends don't come home until 1:30 in the morning, and they are still making noise and forcing you to send an annoyed text to them in the family room at 3:30 a.m. imploring them to GO TO BED,] I once again tried to finish up this silly post, which was no longer interesting even to me, but had become a mission that I could not leave undone. Possibly I was still unconscious when I finished that post, I'm not really clear on it, but I did get it published. Finally. Sort of.
I have a habit of publishing each daily post, then reading it in the published form, to be sure it reads "in print" the way it did in draft form. Occasionally, I will catch a spelling error or a grammatical mistake, which I do try hard to correct, to make the reading easier. Anything for my readers, is my motto. After all, I'm still looking for that wealthy patron who will throw money at me, and I don't want bad grammar and my abysmal spelling to stand between me and Easy Street.
Anyway, I did finally get the post written, which should have been an easy job, seeing as how it was about one of my favorite subjects, cats, and I have lots of entertaining stories about the cats I have known and loved. Except that I started to reread it, and found a mistake in the first line. I went back in and corrected it, and started to reread, only to realize that the correction didn't make any sense.
I heaved a rather substantial sigh, and went back in again to correct the correction, only to find that once I got back to the published version, there was yet another error in the following line. Welcome to my world, in which I have apparently lost all ability to string three intelligible words together to form a simple sentence. I had to go in and make corrections more than a dozen times, which means that my counter is way off now, because believe me, that many people are not showing up on my blog since the last time you were here. Or I was here. Where are we, anyway? Do any of us really know?
Wait. What was I talking about?
Charlie Brown frequently feels lost in a world he does not understand, and which doesn't make sense to him. I know how he feels. I am often puzzled by the world, and left to wonder what drives people to behave the way they do. I am continually confused by the bad things that happen to good people. I wonder why some people prosper despite making all the wrong choices, while others do everything right and still lose out on the brass ring. If life is a merry-go-round, I would like to be the music, because going in circles makes me sick to my stomach, anyway.
I have always loved the Peanuts characters, in part because they resonate for me. They represent a world that I understand, and they are predictable and clear in motivation and direction. I suspect that Charles Schultz and I have a few things in common, despite our different life experiences, and I wish I had gotten a chance to know him before he passed away too soon. I have read that he had a tendency to walk on the dark side in his personal life, but being one to do that myself, I would just consider that being a realist.
I believe Mr. Schultz himself identified most closely with the hapless and luckless Charlie Brown, although during his lifetime he was known to claim that all of the characters are composites, and they all have elements of his own personality within them. I think I identify most closely with Woodstock, myself. I am constantly losing direction, going in circles or flying upside down. I frequently find myself in the clouds, or flying too low, and running into trouble, no matter how much preparation I may do ahead of time.
I lack the self-confidence of a Snoopy or a Lucy, ready to tell the world what to do, much less to just get out there and do it myself. I like clear directions and a scripted procedure, so if I mess up, I can get back on track again.
I find myself pulling for Woodstock, because he is kind of a quirky personification of me in the piece, the one who harmlessly flits around the edges, isn't always in the picture, but is on the sidelines cheering for his best friend, the center of attention. While Snoopy is the idea man, full of directions and answers to the questions, Woodstock is the more introspective creature, wanting to know about the little why's and wherefore's that the more self-confident figures haven't even considered.
I think that I identify with Mr. Schultz in part because my view of the world is similar to what appears to be his rather oppressed viewpoint, where the football will always be pulled away, and the tree will always eat the kite in the end. Although his life was ultimately one that most people can only dream of, he never forgot what it felt like to grow up the son of a hard working barber in middle America. He was always afraid that everything he had achieved would be pulled away unexpectedly, just like Lucy pulling the ball away from Charlie Brown.
I understand that fear, because it happened to me, and it is tough to find yourself flat on your back on the ground in the middle of your life, confused and not knowing how you got there. Mr. Schultz tapped into my fears and my realities and personified them in that football moment, and just like many other people, I will always be able to relate to Charlie Brown because it happened to me.
But we shouldn't forget that he also created Woodstock, and I think the free spirited nature of a bird taking wing, even if erratically, is really more my style. I have noticed, too, that in the end, Woodstock usually arrives at his intended destination, sometimes a little behind schedule, but he is there, nonetheless.
So I will forgive myself for falling down on the job of getting out a column every single day, and I hope you will, too. If I occasionally miss, please chalk it up to a Woodstock moment, and assume I was flying upside down again.
