— Fiction —

The Absent Adults of Childhood Favorites Speak

Mrs. Tina Brown
Mother of Charlie Brown
We know Chuckie is a good little boy, but something is wrong. We’ve tried to be good parents, to offer him what a growing boy needs to become a man. We gave him a puppy (I wanted to give him a pony, but his father would hear nothing of it). We encouraged Chuckie to get into sports. We even tried kite-flying, all to no avail. Personally, I think he wants to learn gymnastics (his father does not agree at all). Then, after seeing that little frail girl, Lucy, make Chuckie fall flat on his back again while playing football—well, we gave up. My husband signed him up for military school. He leaves next week. His father thinks this should straighten him out before he deviates too far. I’m not so sure. I suggested art school, which fell on deaf ears. Next I’m going to suggest a divorce.

Mrs. Sally Smith
Mother of the children from The Cat in the Hat
I came home and found the house in complete shambles. Those kids must have pulled open every drawer and cupboard, then thrown everything into the middle of the room. They tipped over all the furniture, and emptied the contents of the vacuum cleaner onto the floor. To top it off I found Muffy, my goldfish, flopping around on the floor in a pool of his fishbowl water. What really made me flip my wig was when they told me that the house had been a wreck, and that it was at that very moment cleaned up. If that wasn’t psychotic enough, they also told me that it had been destroyed and cleaned by a large cat in a tall red-and-white hat with his two friends Thing One and Thing Two, instead of by two hellion children who should be made from now on to play outside no matter what the weather is. There was no television for a year after that, and I certainly made them scrub the floors harder and longer on the next scheduled cleaning day.

Ms. Emily Longstockings
Grandmother of Pippi
Pippi. Poor, poor, Pippi. I’ve still got a closet full of nice lacy dresses waiting for you. And a big vat of freshly made soap to wash all of that grime and sea salt out of your hair. If you come to live with me, I promise you three square meals a day and all of the dolls and dollhouses a little girl could want. Of course, if you do live with me it will be a proper finishing school for you and no more playing “sea captain” and such. Not for a little lady. In fact, I am prepared to move as far away from the ocean as possible, maybe Kansas or Idaho. Yes, tea-cakes, piano lessons, and buckled shoes for you. Longstockings? It may be our namesake, but I’ve got a jug of kerosene and a hole in the yard to burn each and every one.

Timothy Flaherty
Uncle of Jimmy fromH. R. Pufnstuf
The last time I saw Jimmy, he was carrying his flute around in his pocket like some kind of huge pen. He told me he was going to go take a walk by the sea. He seemed a bit spaced out. Now I know that he didn’t really like learning a musical instrument. My sister—his mother—forced him to learn the flute, which he detested. He told me that day that he wished the stupid thing would play itself. My main concern, now that Jimmy has been missing for so long, is that my good buddy, Ernest, was visiting that week. Now Ernest is a nice guy but he has a bit of a drug problem—which thankfully he’s trying to kick now that all of this has happened. You see, Ernest isn’t sure if he brought four or five hits of acid that week. I told the police, without saying why, that they should probably see if Jimmy ended up in San Francisco or wherever drugged-out hippies live these days. He should be easy to find—a smallish boy with a bowl haircut, a long scraggly hippie beard, and a huge flute sticking out of his pocket … unless, of course, he sold it for more drugs.