I had a job one summer doing data entry for some kind of manufacturing company. Honestly, I’m not sure what the company did. I think it had something to do with car axles. I just entered numbers. I don’t even know what the numbers stood for. I just entered them.

I didn’t have to be in until 11am, but the job was scheduled to go until 6pm every night. This could have prevented me from playing in the summer soccer league at nights. But, I worked so fast, it didn’t matter. They let me go home when my work each day was done and I always went home early. I could fly on the numerical keypad.

I worked next to a sweet lady named Margaret. I would say that she was like the Grandmother I never had, but I had two Grandmothers at the time. I guess you could say that she was like the third Grandmother I never had. Margaret was really impressed by how fast I could type. She was a really sweet lady. Also, Margaret had a daughter who went to college in Boston. I went to college in Boston too.

On the other side of me was a really pretty lady who was a lot older than me. Because she was older and so pretty, I found her really intimidating and hardly talked to her at all. Another reason I never talked to her was that she had a bit of an edge to her. Still, I liked her. One of the main reasons was because her name was Sherry and she was the perfect 80’s kind of girl to have been the one Steve Perry sang about in the song “Oh Sherry”. She even looked like her.

One day, I was taken off my data entry responsibilities because they wanted me to make copies. I must have been making copies for about 4 hours when Sherri said to me, “Are we having fun yet?” It was kind of strange for her to say “we”, because last I checked I was the only one who was making all the copies. Still, it was kind of rare when Alison talked to a runt like me, and I was happy to laugh at her joke more than it probably deserved.

The company had a rule where you couldn’t wear sneakers to work. I suppose this meant that I was supposed to wear shoes. The problem was that I didn’t own any shoes. The only non-sneakers I owned were a large pair of hiking boots. So, I went into work every day wearing some honking things that weighted accentuated every bit of my size 15 feet.

For the most part, I wasn’t self-conscious about the big shoes on my large feet. There was one exception. My boss had a daughter who was a few years younger than me. She was a blonde-haired girl named Alison. Alison was a senior at a large High School in Manchester, NH. I had graduated a year or two before from the smaller town of Goffstown. (Manchester is the big time when it comes to NH).

Alison pretty much had it all – money (her mother was rich), good looks (she was stunning) and a boyfriend who was the quarterback of the football team. She was a really sweet girl, who had a soft smile and kind heart. Unlike Sherry, I wasn’t intimated by Alison. She was way out of my league and a few years younger, so I didn’t even think of her in terms of someone I might date. Also, she was already taken by Joe Football Captain. I just thought of her like a younger sister –someone to watch out for, look after, and return the kindness she showed me with a bit of an extra measure. I was natural and comfortable enough around her to be really funny. Well, I suppose I was really funny. All I can say is that she would really laugh. She was impressed with my typing skills too.

Things went well at the job. Alison’s mom (the boss, if you have forgotten) called me in to tell me that I was doing a great job. I never made any mistakes. She also wanted to tell me to stop short-changing myself on my time sheet. I was working for a temp agency and always rounded down on my hours because I was afraid of doing anything wrong. But, I also had to clock in and out, so they noticed that I kept writing on my timesheet that I worked less hours than their machine said that I actually did.

Alison’s mother was so happy with me, she eventually offered me a full-time job. She knew I probably wasn’t going to take it, because I would be going back to college, but she wanted to offer it me anyway. I did turn the job down, but was pleased at the gesture. I really was good at data entry.

Another time Alison’s mother called me into her office and Alison was there. It wasn’t about work this time. Alison and her boyfriend were having a hard time coming up with plans for the weekend and her mother wanted my input. For the first time, it started to hurt a bit. By hurt, I mean the increased awareness of my longing for something I valued but could never have. I was not Joe Football Captain. The plans for the weekend had nothing to do me. I was the kid with the big feet who could fly on the keyboard.

One day Alison stopped by my desk for longer than usual. It wasn’t out of character for her to chat with me, but it was strange for her to be there for that duration. I had the hardest time figuring out why. It was like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t get it out. Who is good at finding the words for what they want to say anyway? (The answer is people in TV shows – they always seem to nail it.) Still, I was happy to talk with her and we just continued in a seemingly inane conversation for a long time. It wasn’t until later that the conversation made a bit more sense.

Soon, I would heading back to college. Margaret was really sad for me to be leaving. She loved working next to me, and I loved working next to her. She said that maybe we would run into each other when she was visiting her daughter in Boston. Boston is a well-populated place and I thought the notion that we would run into each other was more than a longshot. Still, leaving open the possibly of somehow seeing each other again always makes the process of saying goodbye a little bit easier.

Margaret gave me a gift certificate to Bob Nadeaus. She knew that I loved their Steak & Cheese Sandwiches. I can’t remember if Sherry and I ever said goodbye. I think we only had about 5 conversations total. I never officially said goodbye to Alison either. That time she had lingered around my desk was the last time I would ever talk to her. I didn’t know it at the time, but Alison would be leaving for school the next day. Our extra long conversation was her way of saying goodbye.

* * *

Everyone is always talking about what super-power they would have if they could have anything. Some people want to be invisible. Others want super-human strength. For me, there are two superpowers I want most and they both are related. One is to be able to go back in time. The second is to be able to express myself and have the perfect words to say.

I wrote a book one time, but it was a bit of a raw mess and didn’t really go anywhere. The title of the book was “Unwritten Letters”. It was taken from an Andrew Peterson song (AP is my fav) where he sings: “Got all these letters that I never did write. So much affection I’ve kept inside my heart.” I suppose it was a book about a person struggling to find ways to express his love or even know what to do with it.  Maybe the book wasn’t very good because I’m still not so great at self expression.

Still, there isn’t a whole lot left to say about that job. The company doesn’t exist anymore. They went out of business about 5 or 6 years after I left. I haven’t even driven by building. I have no idea what any of those people are up to. I don’t even remember their names.  I was awesome at that job, though. I am a really fast typist.

If I stand here, I can see the Little Red Haired girl when she comes out of her house… Of course, if she sees me peeking around this tree, she’ll think I’m the dumbest person in the world… But if I don’t peek around the tree, I’ll never see her… Which means I probably AM the dumbest person in the world… which explains why I’m standing in a batch of poison oak. – Charles M. Schulz

The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines unrequited as “not reciprocated or returned in kind.” Such was the theme in many a character’s affection in the Peanuts comics strip. Lucy loved Schroeder. Sally loved Linus. Linus loved Miss Othmar. Peppermint Patty and Marcie loved Charlie Brown. As for Charlie, he was in love with an unnamed and unseen character: The Little Red-Haired girl.

The amount of unrequited love going on the cartoon is enough to remind anyone of their High School prom. Even one of the few relationships that did work – Linus and Lydia– was characterized by “one attempting to get the other’s attention and the other acting cool and indifferent. Sometimes Linus is the uninterested party, sometimes Lydia.”*

What was it about creator Charles Schulz’s past that inspired such a theme throughout the lifetime of his comic? A Wikipedia entry** on the Little Red-Haired Girl proves instructive:

A former coworker, Donna Mae Johnson (born circa 1929 in Minneapolis, Minnesota), was Schulz’s inspiration for the character. A 1947 high school graduate, Johnson was working in the accounting department of the Art Instruction, Inc., a correspondence school where Schulz worked. Johnson and Schulz eventually became romantically involved and dated for three years, but in 1950 when Schulz proposed to her, she turned him down, saying she was already engaged to fireman Allan Wold and married Allan on October 21, 1950.

Said Schulz of the relationship, ‘I can think of no more emotionally damaging loss than to be turned down by someone whom you love very much. A person who not only turns you down, but almost immediately will marry the victor. What a bitter blow that is.’ This experience became arguably the most poignant of all story lines for the entire Peanuts strip.

The Wikipedia entry also notes that Charlie fell in love with her during a school lunch period on November 12, 1963 remarking, “I’d sure like to eat lunch with that little red-haired girl..”  Although he first catches sight of her during the November 19, 1961 strip declaring he would, “give anything in the world if that little girl with the red hair would come over and sit with me.” He continued to love her until the end of the strip in 2000.

Despite all his affection, Charlie can never quite muster up the courage to speak to his little sweetheart. He most often notices her eating lunch outdoors, but never goes near her. He tries on a number of occasions to send her a Valentine’s Day card, but either gives up or sends it anonymously. The Wikipedia entry continues, “Anything touched by her or associated with her is precious to him. For example, in one strip he finds her pencil dropped in the hallway, notices that it has been chewed and declares, ‘She’s human!’ Presumably, this common habit makes her seem more approachable, but, typically, he is prevented from following through when Lucy snatches the pencil and returns it to the Little Red-Haired Girl with a brisk, ‘Hey, kid! Here’s your stupid pencil!’”

At one point after the little girl moves away, Linus is so fed up with Charlie’s inactivity, he exclaims, “She’s gone! You didn’t do anything! You just stood there! You never do anything! All you ever do is just stand there! You drive everybody crazy, Charlie Brown! I’m so mad I could scream! I AM screaming!!! (to Lucy) And don’t YOU give me any trouble!!!!”

Though Schulz was devastated by the loss of his real-world little red-haired girl, he and Donna Johnson-Wold remained friends for the rest of his life.  And even though Charlie Brown never quite got the attention of his little sweetheart, Johnson-Wold did have this to say around the time Shulz announced his retirement in 1999:”I’d like to see Charlie Brown kick that football, and if he gets the little red-haired girl, that’s fine with me”. 

While Charlie Brown might have been a nobody to the Little Red-Haired Girl, he was somebody to the person she represented. Somehow, I think that was enough.

Part 1 of Randall Goodgame’s Peanuts tribute and the song which inspired this post. Listen for the mention of the Little Red-Haired Girl:

Part 3 of Goodgames’ Peanuts tribute:

*http://peanuts.wikia.com/wiki/Unrequited_love
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red-Haired_Girl

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

1. They became too popular. It used to mean something to be a Red Sox fan. They didn’t always sell out every home game, win a ton of games and get so much attention. Unlike loving Apple and jumping in the air for pictures, being a fan wasn’t necessarily the cool thing to do. Eventually, if you wanted to be like the crowd, you rooted for the Red Sox. If you wanted to dance to a different drummer, you needed to find another club. (“Club” is a pun. Get it?)

2. They became too good. When you’re used to winning, it’s easy to take it granted. When you haven’t won in a long time, you appreciate it more.

3. They became too evil (part 1). As a young person, I despised the Yankees for having so much more money to spend than everyone else. It was so unfair. The Red Sox didn’t win, but at least it felt like more of an honest effort. Now, the Sox are just as bad.

4. They became too evil (part 2). Sticking with the integrity theme, I was outraged when I learned that Jason Giambi, who hit a key home run to help the Yankees win the 2003 ALCS, was on the juice. Little did I know that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were also not playing by the rules. I was so blindsided, I started question a lot of things – like whether my real name is actually LaMarcus.

5. They kept turning the team over. I’ve not sure I’ve ever cared about a team as much as I did the 2003 Red Sox. I grew to love those players and when they lost, I was heartbroken. It didn’t mean as much to me when they won in 2004 because half the team was new. Many of those guys I desperately wanted to see win a championship were long gone. More recently, the team became a lot of overpaid mercenaries.

6. They traded away my favorite player. There were other fan favorites, but something about the connection with Nomar was special. We loved him and he loved us. Thing spiraled downhill faster than the first time I hit a ski slope. His bizarre departure – complete with a smear job by management which led Nomar to calling into the Sports Talk radio station to salvage some love with the fans – was too hard to take. He let us down by seemingly pouting on the bench while Jeter was diving into the stands. We let him down by turning on him before having all of the facts. It was as if Nomar was a girl I was deeply in love with. Then, our parents got into a fight and the next day her family moved to California. No closure. No explanation. Not even a chance to say goodbye.

7. They got too boring. In hindsight, I kind of miss the “idiots” with the “Cowboy Up” routine. They had a lot of personality back then. This past team seemed about as interesting as those PBS specials on birds that I watched in third grade.

8. They got too disjointed. What the bleep bleep bleep (picture creative string of obscenities using words not heard since Middle School) has been going on lately? All the stories about the management, players and coach reminds me of the band at the end of the movie “That Thing You Do”. Things absolutely unraveled.

9. I became too old. The older I get, the less closely I follow sports in general. I still love them, but I’ve rooted for enough champions to realize that they can’t fill a hole in a heart. It is like Ice Cream – good for desert, but limited in nutritional value and nothing you could ever live off of.  There is an emptiness to it.

10. I became too busy. Along with being a young dreamer, part of the reason I liked baseball so much is that I used to have a lot more free time. There really wasn’t much else going on. What could be more exciting than watching the Red Sox? This was before Al Gore invented the Inernet. The world has changed. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and baseball is pretty darn slow.

Having said all that, I suppose that if I really didn’t care about the Red Sox, I wouldn’t feel the need to write about them. Maybe a better title would be “why I miss the Red Sox”.  Or, at the least the Red Sox I once knew. When I take a step back, though, I realize that it isn’t really baseball that I miss. What I really miss is dreaming about playing for the Red Sox one day and taking my first steps inside Fenway Park. I miss being in awe of how fast they could throw the ball and how hard they could hit it. I miss have heroes to look up to and wondering what it would ever be like if they won. I miss pouring over the box scores, talking about the team with my Dad and wondering what kind of player Mike Greenwell would turn into.  What I really miss is not being disillusioned with life on earth.  As I try to rediscover some childlike faith, I live with that ache that the Red Sox can never fill.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” — C.S. Lewis

A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.

I’m here to tell you that this book isn’t just for kids. Despite the “young adult” label* it can most certainly be enjoyed by adults. And, as the reader so often finds him or herself in the story, the book has a lot to teach those who are willing to listen.

It’s a story about a desperately lonely boy named Grady who doesn’t know who he is or where he is from. All he knows is a con artist legal guardian of sorts, who might even be his father. As the book puts it, “I only know one man who might be able to tell me where I come from, and that man is a liar and a fraud”. That man’s name is Floyd. Floyd is a charlatan and Grady is the charlatan’s boy.

In search of adventure and perhaps lunch-money, they go from village to village and scheme to scheme putting on a show which can be best described by reading the book or a more articulate review. Though Floyd is pretty despicable, Grady does his best to win Floyd’s approval. As Grady puts it, “A feller’s got to love somebody don’t he?” At the very least, he has to love somebody and all he has is Floyd. As Grady goes about winning Floyd’s approval, he learns some things about himself which will surprise the reader just as much they surprised the protagonist. Grady doesn’t go on an adventure by himself. He takes the reader with him.

This unique, touching and imaginative tale is subtly hilarious and a perfect blend of sadness, reality, fantasy and triumph. The ending in particular is among the best I have read in a long time. I have only recently discovered Jonathan Rogers and I am so glad that I have. Not only does he know how to tell a story, he has the kind of insight which doesn’t come around too often. When I do find someone like Rogers, I want to benefit from every last drop of profundity. The Charlatan’s Boy is a good place to start.

Editor’s Note (still Mark as I double as the editor): I highly recommend you check out Jonathan’s blog. It can be found at: http://jonathan-rogers.com/.  Also, I will send a free copy of this book to the first person to leave a comment so long as you live in the U.S. or  Canda, only because I like you (and don’t mind Canada).

*I suppose young adults are different from kids anyhow. I just wanted to be able to use that C.S. Lewis quote.

(Legal Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. However, I also bought a copy for myself.)

All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

“”The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”

“Just going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.”

“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

“There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”

“We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”

“Dear Sir: Regarding your article ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ I am. Yours truly,”
— G.K. Chesterton

It’s quotes like the above that made me want to dig more deeply into the wit and wisdom of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Despite living a century ago, there is a freshness about his work that applies just as much today as it did back then. Upon seeing that a book about the life of Chesterton was available from Thomas Nelson for review, I jumped on the opportunity.

To get straight to the point, I was disappointed. Rather than gaining fresh insights into the man behind the larger-than-life literary legend, I primarily got a chronology of when each Chesterton book came out, and block quotes regarding what it was about and how it was received at the time. While lighter than I hoped on behind-the-scenes material, it does, as stated in the title, delve into the impact of Chesterton. To that end, it somewhat accomplishes its goal.

In regards to the life of Chesterton, we learn that his lighthearted, good-natured and gregarious nature had a way of endearing himself even to those like George Bernard Shaw who had diametrically opposed views. We also learn about his period of spiritual darkness as a young adult. There are other interesting tid-bits here and there. Overall, though, the book felt more like a dry text from a Church History class than an engaging story capturing an engaging man. Having said that, it is clear that Belmonte deeply respects and appreciates Chesterton, and the honor he affords G.K. shines through.

Overall, I have to think that there are better options out there. It took me months to get through this book and I can’t say with confidence that I got a lot out of it. I would start elsewhere.

(I was provided a review copy of this book by the publisher.)

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise does not merely express but completes the enjoyment. It’s not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling each other how beautiful they are. The delight in one another isn’t complete unless it’s expressed.

- C.S. Lewis

UPDATE: The snowstorm that day actually has it’s own Wikipedia entry. Kind of ridiculous if you ask me.