"I Got a Rock..."

Charlie Brown, the little 8-year-old by from Minnesota who never gives up. Charlie Brown, the eternal optimist. One of my favorite things to do on Halloween night is watch, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." The made for television "movie" first aired on October 27th in 1966, on CBS. Produced by Lee Mendelson with theme music by Vince Guaraldi and created and written by Charles Schultz, the animated TV Special  is as iconic as Trick-or-Treating and Halloween itself.

When I was a child, you used to have to wait for your favorite animated specials to play on television. There were no VCRs, DVDs or TiVO in "those days." Can you imagine the anticipation? Can you remember the anticipation? For those of you that can remember, wasn't it fun? Knowing you and most everyone you knew were probably watching the same thing on television, as a country? Television was the main source of home entertainment, not counting games and the antiquated thing known as the imagination. Remember imagination? You know! When you used to play pretend? Isn't playing pretend what Halloween is all about? See? I knew you would remember pretend! Yay for you! Pat yourself on the back for using your imagination! I bet you're thinking about the costumes you used to wear right now! Since I was both blonde and blue-eyed, I dressed as Tinkerbell one year. My mother made my costume and it had sparkly silver snow flakes on it. I used to beg to wear it! One year, I was Alice in Wonderland and my mother made that dress too; in fact, I still have it! My favorite costumes though were when my brothers and I used to dress up as hobos. We'd raid my father's closet and stuff pillows down our pants and shirts. Mom would dirty our faces up with black eyeliner and I'd get to have a beard and mustache. (The dressing up part was just as fun as the trick-or-treating part of the night.) Fun times!

Anyway, each year we watched  "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." We never gave up hoping poor Charlie Brown's bag would not be full of rocks. We hoped and hoped he would not open his crumpled paper sack and with utter complacency state, "I got a rock." He just accepted it and went on to the next house and then the next house. His friends got bubble gum and chocolate or the holy grail of treats, money; and yet, Charlie Brown always got the "trick" end of the "treat." Charlie Brown always got a rock! Always! I used to ask my mother why he kept on knocking and she used to say, 'Charlie Brown is an eternal optimist Honey. That's why he keeps on knocking.'

Sometimes, life gives you treats and sometimes, life gives you rocks. Our life keeps on getting interesting if we just keep knocking...

Share your thoughts about keeping optimistic, even when you get a bag of rocks.

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