The Little Red-Headed Girl In All of Us

Everybody needs a little red-headed girl in their life … you could be the little red-headed girl in someone’s life even if you don’t have red hair.

Yup.

I learned the wisdom of the red-headed girl by watching Charlie Brown, him and his whole Peanuts Gang threw down some serious heart-warming material for the soul.

THE LITTLE RED-HAIRED GIRL FIRST MENTIONED: November 19, 1961 Not much is known about the The Little Red-Haired Girl except that she is Charlie Brown’s unrequited love in the Peanuts comic strip. Charlie Brown never found the courage to talk to her and she was never actually seen. The closest she came to appearing in Peanuts was in May, 1998, where she is seen in silhouette dancing with Snoopy. DID YOU KNOW: In the animated specials, which Charles M. Schulz considered non-canonical, the Little Red-Haired Girl is named Heather.

I knew I would enjoy the movie and I knew my kids would love it, but I had no idea that there would be such a great life lesson accompanied by movie popcorn and juice boxes.

The Peanuts Gang becomes part of our family every holiday season beginning with The Great Pumpkin, Thanksgiving dinner, and ending with Christmas. So it was of no surprise that we hit the movies on opening weekend. We’re big Charlie Brown fans. We love underdogs around here. We rooted for him to catch that break, to succeed, to kick that football, to fly that kite. We wanted to high-five him when he had his moment and smiled knowing that it had happened.

But aside from having his moment of victory, he had something else in this movie. He had an A-Ha! moment because someone else believed in him. Now for the record we know that Snoopy and Linus always believed in him, they were always in his corner, they always wanted him to succeed and never thought of him as a Blockhead. They thought of him as Charlie Brown.

But this time … this time there was a girl … a little red-headed girl who gave him the butterflies and made his heart beat faster. This little red-headed girl saw things in him that he didn’t see in himself. All the things he perceived as mistakes, missed opportunities, or utmost social disasters turned out to be valuable qualities like compassion, honesty, goodness, and courage. This girl didn’t see what was wrong, she saw what was right.

And that’s he needed, that’s what we all we needed.That moment was so awesome i stopped eating my popcorn. I paused to see if my kids were paying attention. I turned to look, their eyes staring at the glow of the screen and the smiles were big.

We all need a little red-headed girl in our life and we need to be that little red-headed girl for somebody. We need people to look at our choices and not see the failure or embarrassment, but realize the value of our spirit. We need to have people see our potential and inspire us to reach it when we can’t see it ourselves.

I was grateful for the Charlie Brown lesson and I was even more thankful that my son and daughter got a chance to see it. They’re both capable of being the little red-headed girl, we all are, it’s in the spot where our heart rests.

.

.

Advertisement