Kicking the Football

He meets Lucy at about ten o'clock, on one of the benches near the football field.

"Charlie Brown," he praises, in that voice of Lucy, all authority and confidence.

"How are you Lucy?" she asks as she wraps her arms around him.

He shrugged, "Okay, I guess."

The fact is, things have changed for the better for both of you recently. It was hard for everyone in line. It has been almost two decades now since Charles Shultz has died and peanuts have stopped running in the newspapers. Although you all still look like round-headed children, with no vague details that you used to have, you are actually sixty-seven years old now.

You are all beginning to feel your death. Gradually, you know, the repetition of the lines will stop appearing in the papers. Gradually the books and collections he has will run out of print. Gradually people will begin to forget you, and you will all begin the slow process of blurring.

Many characters suffer in this. At Lucy's psychological center, business is booming. But all hope for the future does not bode well for you. He is progressing well as before. He lives with a gang, feeds Snoopy, goes to school, and hopes that one of these days he will really understand what the teacher is saying. It is not a happy life, but it is good enough. Generally, if you are not happy with the way, at least in moderation. And you have noticed over the years how rare and valuable that is.

So you blow air with Lucy. You exchange information about different members of the group and talk about his business, as well as Snoopy's recent letter from the publisher, and a little bit about the declining comedy market, and how you both feel about it, but it's all true. good afternoon. Great time to find an old and dear friend.

There is a ball next to him. Sitting there, leaning on her legs, white strings facing the blue sky. He notices when you look at him, and he smiles.

"What do you think, Charlie Brown?" He asked as he touched her cheek. He is moving. He picks up the ball with one hand and lifts it up, looks at it, and raises his eyebrows. "What do you say? One more time, because of the old times?"

Lots of people in the queue, okay, everyone in the queue, asking you many times why you keep doing this. "You know you're just going to lift the ball and fall on your back," they said. "Why are you bothering?"

Something they do not understand, something Lucy does not understand, something that may not exist, even those who read daily Peanuts do not understand that for you it is not whether you really kick the ball or not. It has never been the case that you really kick the ball or not.

The fact is, the more you feel as you run across the arena, the darker the energy inside you. At that moment, even though you know it is almost certain that Lucy will remove the ball, the feeling that it may break out inside you until you feel you can explode with excitement. And yes, it hurts a little bit when Lucy removes the ball and leaves you to fall to the ground. And yes, there is a feeling of shame in it too, a feeling of betrayal, and diminished. But it is worth it in the end.

Because in the end, it doesn’t matter if Lucy picks it up or not. The important thing is that you are the one who will run fully on the ball and try to kick it, if possible in this case you will present it, despite all the embarrassment you have had in the past. This is what makes you Charlie Brown. This is the kind of person you are, type the of person you always want to be.

So you go through the whole process. Lucy kneels on the green grass in the same way. Hold the ball firmly, straight to the point where it is flat. She looks at you, shakes her head, smiles, and slowly shrugs her shoulders. He stared at the ball. Hold that image in your mind, and imagine your foot meeting it, imagine the ball flying overhead. He crouches down, nods to Lucy, and walks away, traversing the grass, flying, running toward the ball with everything he has.