If anyone ever decides to reboot “Peanuts”, I hope that they will consider a few updates to reflect modern sensibilities. Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and the rest of the gang have become an integral part of the American experience. While we can never replace and should never tinker with them, it can’t hurt to give them some new friends to interact with.

In that spirit, I have a few suggestions.

Wintergreen Wanda

Visuals: Just like Peppermint Patty, but with a flat cap and a bag of peanuts that she eats messily.

Character: Peppermint Patty’s cousin from Yorkshire, who visits in the summer. Tries to play baseball like it’s cricket. Very clumsily and awkwardly into Marcie. Keeps pestering Linus for Red Apple cigarettes. Quotes obscure Steely Dan lyrics that seem to have no bearing on the present conversation.

Catchphrases: “That’s not how we do it in Leeds”, “You don’t know jack about Jill, Patty me lass”, and “Call me Deacon Blue”.

Big Dumb Bird

Visuals: Large man in a yellow jumpsuit. Shaved head, thick leather spiked bracelet on left arm. Big Seventies sunglasses. Often seen using kettlebells.

Character: Woodstock’s former cellmate, who did 12 years in Attica for “giving some glassy narc the full treatment”. Drinks whole unpasteurized milk, says he knows Krav Maga “and some other guys who could really crack this place like a melon”. Has a conspiracy theory for everything, including his conspiracy theories.

Catchphrases: “Step off or get stepped on”, “I’d stab a man dead for some Old Milwaukee”, and “That’s one’s a narc or I’m Garry Shandling”.

Cousin Oliver

Visuals: Blond bowl cut, thick-framed glasses, and a tattered Led Zeppelin concert shirt. 

Character: Only seen trapped in a translucent blue cube, which floats in the background, bouncing slowly between the edges of the frame like an old screensaver. His endless screams and futile escape attempts go completely unnoticed by the other characters. 

Catchphrases: “Please, anyone, just notice me!”, “I’m a person! I deserve to be loved!”, and “Why won’t you let me die?”

Terry Tencent

Visuals: Close-cropped hair, goatee, powerful upper body. Yellow t-shirt, red cardigan tied around his neck.

Character: Schroeder’s piano teacher. Passionate about Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Monk, and Brubeck. Has two moods: viciously sarcastic and bitterly maudlin. When frustrated, starts to pick up a folding chair (there is always one within reach, no matter where he is), then thinks better of it and downs a bottle of apple juice instead. His brother, Buddy, is clinically insane and has twice been elected governor.

Catchphrases: “Not on my dime!”, “This juice tastes like trash – I deserve that, I deserve trash juice”, and “If Monk ever heard that, he’d kill us all”.

Gisela von Juntz

Visuals: Black pencil skirt, hair pulled back severely into a veritable fountain of golden curls, clipboard under her left arm. 

Character: Lucy’s new nemesis! She is the licensing inspector for local psychiatry stands, and has a lot to say about Ms. Van Pelt’s credentials, methods, and billing practices. Has a dark, twisted relationship with Linus, who gives her the dirt on Lucy in exchange for letting him take pictures of her feet crushing army men.

Catchphrases: “This does not meet the standard of care, Ms. Van Pelt”, “Clearly incurable”, “You must earn the ball, Herr Brown”, and “so has Grubby been a dirty little worm today?”

Elias Graham Crakehurst

Visuals: Small, shy, round frameless glasses always sliding down his nose. Avoids eye contact and geometry lessons. Backpack full of huge old books, scrolls, and dice. 

Character: The new religious kid in school. DM of the school’s longest-running D&D campaign. Coughs a lot (“ftagn! Ftagn!”) and speaks reverentially of a deity he calls Bokrug.  Runs a three-card-monte game behind the kindergarten classroom. Terrified of cats, left-handers, red-haired girls, blonde-haired girls, dark-haired girls, bald girls, direct sunlight, and Tide Pods.

Catchphrases: “Roll for perception, but prepare for madness”, “Old Bokrug croaks and the stars shudder”, and “G-g-g-girls? Where?”

Miss Hoofnmaw

Visuals: Red blouse, knee-length grey skirt, nude stockings, well-worn Asics. 

Character: A new teacher, fresh out of grad school. At recess, she loves to play trombone with a mute; no one can ever figure out what song she’s playing. Charlie, Pigpen, Schroeder, Shermy, and Violet all have crushes on her. She rarely assigns homework, but when she does, it’s usually to edit an obscure Wikipedia page unrelated to anything they’ve studied in class. Often claims to have guest-starred on three episodes of “Parks and Recreation”, but says her scenes wound up on the cutting room floor because of “politics”.

Catchphrases: “Hope is why we all get up instead of lying in our own sweaty sheets forever”, “Amy Poehler bought me a Diet Coke one time”, and “When I went to Comic-con …”.

Principal Scaldingly

Visuals: Same hair as Charlie Brown. Three-piece brown tweed suit, black tie. Huge Meerschaum pipe, never lit but always in his mouth or hand.

Character: Formerly Assistant Vice-Principal Scaldingly, formerly Sub-Trainee Intern Mop Bucket Scrubber Scaldingly, formerly Rear Admiral Scaldingly of the Royal Navy. Fought in five wars, two of which may actually have happened. Makes very positive, energetic morning PA announcements that often devolve into terrifying flashbacks from his past, followed by uncomfortably long periods of sobbing. Seems particularly fond of Charlie Brown, but in trying to help he always makes poor Charlie’s life worse. Determined to replace “blockhead” in school slang with “toadhand”, which he says comes from Admiral Nelson’s private diaries. Smokes Red Apple cigarettes to calm his nerves.

Catchphrases: “Stay taut till sunup, tars”, “Wind from the north, which is trouble with a capital D”, and “He was just a lad from Leeds. He never deserved that, not a bit of it. But here he is, dead, dismembered, and damn near forgot. That’s the fleet for you, sailing ever over the bones of the damned.”