Our local theater group is back. After a three year hiatus they chose to bring the Peanuts gang to the stage. I suppose since neither the comics that appeared in the newspaper, nor the specials that aired on holidays included singing, I was not expecting it. 

Wow. 

The characters' vocals melted together as they celebrated suppertime, and composed a book report on Peter Rabbit. Charlie Brown captured my heart, if not that of the red headed girl, when he poured his voice into the audience. Schroeder inspired me to love Beethoven more that I already do, such that I looked up his actual birthday. I was charmed to discover that Ludwig's beginning is marked not by his birth but instead by his baptism. 

I have no idea how the doghouse sashayed around the floor during Snoopy's face off with the dastardly Red Baron. But whatever the source of locomotion was hiding inside they were cordial enough to offer Snoopy a cane for his soft shoe dance later in the show. 

My perspective has aged since I read the comics as a little girl. I notice that as crabby as Lucy is to Charlie Brown, for a fleeting time she is aware of it. Which is a theme I am cognizant of in my sixties. Whom did I get cross with this week? As a child I was trying to not be the kid who was picked last. Now I ache for my son for whom social cues are an enigma. Benjamin doesn't have a security blanket, though he is attached to his pink water bottle. He will never manage a baseball team, or have a beagle, but I can say with conviction that he is a good man, too.