Made-up Words
In most cases, made-up words grow from a childÕs 
misunderstanding, and they stick around because theyÕre 
adorable, or easy to remember, like totes adorbs. When my 
daughter was in kindergarten, she referred to a hide-a-bed as 
a Honda bed, and we still say this in my family to this day.
Today, I want to tell you the story of another made-up word 
in my family, one that comes from my own childhood. I was 
in kindergarten when my family moved from a smaller 
single-story ranch in one suburb to a larger two-story in the 
next suburb over. To ease the transition, I suppose, my Mom 
had my room painted blue, and went to the local Hallmark 
store bought and hung a series of posters featuring members 
of the Peanuts gang.
There was Snoopy wearing sunglasses with the words Joe 
Cool across his sweatshirt. Linus and his blanket sat under 
the quote ÒHappiness is a warm blanket,Ó which always 
confused me a bit, to be honest, because the way Linus holds 
his blanket, you know, seems like itÕs more for anxiety and 
less for warmth.
But the poster that I remember in the most detail, the one I 
laid in bed and looked at and thought about almost every 
morning, was a profile of Charlie Brown, laying in his bed, his 
covers pulled up around his head. The room is keyed in dark 
purples and blues, and there are little lines around his eyes 
that Charles Schulz would use to indicate stress or upset. 
Charlie Brown stares blankly out of frame. Above him is 
written the phrase ÒThought for the day: Go back to bed and 
hope tomorrow will be better.Ó
What the fuck, Hallmark?
IÕm always perplexed by this memory when it surfaces?Ñ?and 
it does surface, more often than I like to admit. ItÕs a great 
example of when a product ostensibly for kids is actually 
written for adults, who might have the context and fullness of 
time to shake their heads knowingly and think ÒOh yeah Been 
there, Charlie Brown. Been there.Ó
But when youÕre six, you struggle with what Charlie Brown is 
suggesting here. Stay in bed? For a whole day? What? Why? 
WhatÕs going on, Chuck?Ó
But then, then you go to elementary school, and you ride 45 
minutes on a school bus twice a day, this in the era before 
getting all upset about bullying was a thing, the atomic 
wedgie era, I call it, when your underpants were yanked so 
hard that the band tears off and when you try to escape, 
swinging your Evel Knievel lunchbox in wild arcsÑ just to 
make create some space between you and those who have 
inexplicably chosen to torment you, only to see it kicked out 
of your hands, the lid dent and break off and the thermos 
inside fall and scatter across the floor, the age when kids 
would gang up to shove your head in a toilet and flush it and 
gleefully call out Swirly! Swirly! Swirly! and you can do little 
more than endure it, and wonder why your teacher never 
bothered to ask a single question about why youÕve returned 
to class from the bathroom soaking wet.
You have those days, quite early in your life, you experience 
that fullness of time, and you find yourself, in grade three, 
wearied, with stress marks around your eyes, and you lay in 
bed and look at this poster that some fuckers at Hallmark 
thought would even be remotely appropriate for kids to hang 
on their walls, and you think, you think ÒI get it now, Chuck. I 
get it. This life sure seems for shit sometimes.Ó
I think back to my room and this poster often. IÕve spent 
years of my adult life battling depression, seeing an army of 
therapists just to keep myself going. And itÕs alarming how 
often I find myself laying in my bed, thinking about my 
Charlie Brown poster, thinking of the miles and miles and 
hours and hours between this day and that, marveling at how 
a world of travels and fifteen thousand days can pass and you 
still find yourself back here, where you started, trying to deny 
the truth of this dayÕs thought: Go back to bed and hope 
tomorrow will be better.
 
I feel, now, that I should point out that like many kids of my 
time, I loved Peanuts. I read the comics every morning in the 
Plain Dealer while I ate bowl after bowl of Cheerios and 
girded myself for the bus ride. My parents bought me 
collections of the comics for birthdays, and in our family we 
watched every Charlie Brown holiday special there was. 
Which is all to say that while Chuck and I had a shared 
understanding about the shitiness of the world, we both also 
enjoyed the heck out of SnoopyÕs antics, marveled at 
SchroederÕs piano playing and thought seriously about 
dropping a nickel in LucyÕs can for some much needed 
psychiatric advice.
And I think itÕs because I studied those posters in my room, 
and because I read strip after strip in the paper, that one day, 
in art class, in third grade, when we were given a large sheet 
of newsprint to make our own poster, that I started drawing 
Peanuts, and though constrained by my third-grade level 
skills, somehow produced a fairly accurate re-creation of 
Snoopy sitting with Woodstock atop his doghouse. Somehow 
I had absorbed the tiny details of each character?Ñ?the inset of 
SnoopyÕs ear, for example, and the confusion of WoodstockÕs 
feet. Kids at my table looked over and said ÒHey, thatÕs pretty 
good,Ó and I, having never really receiving positive praise 
from my peers, didnÕt know what to say. So I said ÒI know,Ó 
and I kept drawing.
Next to the doghouse, I drew Charlie Brown holding a picket 
sign?Ñ?a square of poster tacked to a stick. The Peanuts kids 
could often be found in their comic strips picketing around 
their neighborhood holding signs like ÒWelcome Great 
PumpkinÓ or ÒToday is BeethovenÕs Birthday.Ó I suppose that 
this was away for the characters to create some agency for 
themselves?Ñ?making a sign and tacking it to a stick and 
wandering their streets with it, as if to declare this is who I 
am, this is what IÕm all about.
Which is probably why I drew Charlie Brown, whom I donÕt 
remember doing any picketing in the comic strip itself, 
holding a picket sign. And why I wrote on that sign ÒBe nice 
to Charlie Brown day.Ó
Because I think I wanted Chuck to do something about his 
predicament. To declare that he was worthy of decent 
treatment. To give him a reason to get out of that damned 
bed because he was pretty sure today would be OK.
My poster then received the very highest honor a third grade 
artwork can receive: the teacher laminated it.
Lamination! Lamination! To forever seal your document 
inside two heat-pressed sheets of clear plastic. To give it a 
much better chance of making it home untorn and onto itÕs 
rightful place of honor on the family refrigerator.
Which is where I put my poster when I got it home. I should 
mention that my parents were not very big Òartwork on the 
fridgeÓ types. My Dad was of the opinion that only direct and 
honest feedback was of value when it came to his sonÕs 
artwork; I once showed him a drawing that I had made of a 
purple helicopter hovering over a waterfall, and he said Òthis 
pictureÕs a fake. The only detail is the helicopter and itÕs not 
drawn very well.Ó
That might have been the last thing I ever showed him. I was 
in first grade.
So you can imagine that I was feeling pretty confident about 
my laminated poster if I brought it home and put it up on the 
fridge by myself. Check that out, Dad. ItÕs laminated, bitch.
At dinner that evening, I waited for someone to remark on 
the awesome Peanuts poster that now graced the fridge, and 
when they didnÕt I finally asked if they had seen my poster.
ÒWhatÕs beniceto?Ó my Dad asked.
ÒWhat?Ó
ÒBeniceto,Ó my Mom said. ÒWhy is Charlie Brown 
saying Beniceto?Ó
At this point, it dawned on me that my handwriting, always a 
challenge, and the available space on Charlie BrownÕs poster 
had led me to write ÒBe nice toÓ with no discernable spaces 
between the words. And my parents were reading it as one 
word: Beniceto. And I remember feeling so defeated by this 
that I just stared straight down at the pork chop on my plate 
while my Mom tried to make this all seem funny.
ÒWe thought you were learning Italian,Ó she said 
ÒBeniceto! Beniceto!Ó and then, ÒCome on. You know weÕre 
only teasing you.Ó
She said this latter sentence to me a lot while I was growing 
up. But IÕve never done well with being teased, no matter how 
minor the joke may be. ItÕs as if my ability to roll with teasing 
was flushed down that toilet years before, along with my 
dignity and my ability to laugh at myself. Swirly! Swirly! 
Swirly!
I took the poster off the fridge when I did the dishes that 
night. I donÕt know what ever became of it.
 
I do know what became of Beniceto, however. It followed me 
as I grew up, hung out in the back of my brain, and when I 
had kids, I taught it to them. When youÕre raising kids, IÕve 
found itÕs handy to have one word that gently reminds 
someone to be kinds to others. My daughter is in middle 
school now, and has some teachers who quote Òhate our 
whole classÓ and quote Ògive us ten times as much homework 
as the other kids.Ó And I listen to her vent with as much 
empathy as I can muster (which?Ñ?admittedly?Ñ?is never 
enough).
But if her complaining crosses a line, gets personal about a 
teacher or another student, IÕll softly rejoin ÒHey, now. 
Beniceto, ok. Beniceto.Ó And my kids know that this means 
Òbe nice toÓ someone, because the truth of the world is that 
sometimes life can be for shit, but we donÕt have the luxury of 
going back to bed and hoping for a better tomorrow. For 
whatever little and tiny bit itÕs worth in this sometimes shitty 
world, beniceto, I say. Beniceto.