durr...

For my first post in 4 months, I could tell you about what I’m up to with work nowadays, in my far-flung corner of the world. It’s alright, by the way, thanks for asking.
I could bore you about the progress I’ve made with running, since that would be picking up where I left off.
I could tell you about love lost.
I could tell you about love found. And lost, again. Maybe I’ll get to that some other time.
I could tell you about a cabasa. You know there’s a story there.
I could tell you about little droplets of hope you leave with people that you didn’t realize you gave until they repay you. And then it comes back as a wave that sweeps you off your feet.

Buuuut I won’t. Not yet, at least.

Instead I’m gonna post about the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, which was celebrated yesterday. 40 years of Cookie Monster, Kermit the Frog, Grover (let me digress first. I don’t care what anyone else says, but Grover is proof that, for sure, Jim Henson and his crew were definitely smoking something. Who the heck creates a blue monster and names it ‘Grover’?), and a motley assortment of endearing characters. Sesame Street has been around so long, the characters actually spawned two generations in Telly and Elmo. Yes, that’s spawned, not spanned.

You know those personality tests, where you pick an animal, or a color, and it tells you what kind of person you are? They should include Sesame Street characters in there. I was never really a fan of the ‘regulars’, like Kermit, or Ernie & Bert, Big Bird or Oscar the Grouch for that matter. My favorite characters were ones that weren’t always on-cam, the Yip-Yips (yeah, they’re called the Yip-Yips), and Barkley. What I’d have given to have a dog like Barkley. I wonder what those choices would say about my personality, but at the very least, I know they’re off-beat picks. Even as a kid, I was weird. Should’ve known.

There were, of course, the real people cast as the friendly folk of Sesame Street. There was Gordon (you know he could be badass if he wanted), and Maria & Luis (you just knew they were going to end up together), along with a whole host of others, young and old. And it was these people who would provide some seminal moments in the show’s history. I won’t claim to have known Mr. Hooper, but my elder sisters can’t forget his classic response to Big Bird, who was always butchering his name: ‘Hooper, Hooper!’ And the first episode after his death has been deemed as one of the most important moments in television history, as it taught children about mortality. That one day, we won’t be able to come back to share good times with our closest family and friends. There was another important person in Linda, who, being deaf, showed kids that, maybe some people are a bit different, color and gender aside, but there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to ridicule or be ridiculed about being different.

And that, really, was what Sesame Street was all about. It was about teaching kids (originally ones who could not go to school and watched TV at home instead) about basic stuff. You know, stuff. And while the show taught us to count (ah, ah, ah!!!), spell, proper eating eating habits (well, at least since cookie monster cleaned up his act), and all about customer service courtesy of Grover the waiter, it taught us other things as well. Things that are sometimes forgotten, or maybe taken for granted. Sometimes, they're things that we adults don’t have the courage to teach our children, and it takes a ragtag bunch of puppets to do so. I guess young and old, we’re always learning something, after all, from that TV show with humble, gritty beginnings 40 years ago.
So to the creators and crew throughout the 40 year-run of Sesame Street, congratulations. And thank you.