“C” is for “cookie!” That’s good enough for me.
– Cookie Monster
It was a blue plastic suitcase-looking thing. Open it, and you found a record player. Over and over again, if you entered my bedroom, you would hear Big Bird singing a song in which he mistook the alphabet for one word. I remember listening to it because I liked the song. I remember realizing what was going on in the song. I remember trying to sing the alphabet as one word. I never quite could. I’m still chasing the cool of Sesame Street.
I remember what must have been a re-run of “Farewell, Mr. Hooper” and how sad I was that Big Bird was so sad at the end.
I remember coming in from playing in the woods behind my grandparents’ house to sit on the couch after my grandmother passed me an old margarine tub full of apple slices and whatever was fresh in the garden. Then, I would watch Sesame Street followed by Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
I met up with all the regulars, sang to 12 with the people who lived in the pinball machine, laughed at how the Twiddle Bugs didn’t understand how small they were compared to the rest of us and kept pulling for Super Grover (Grover was always my favorite).
I’m in the midst of finals and papers and tying up the semester here. It’s a world that’s far from learning to bring words together, the joy of rubber duckies, and that Oscar wasn’t so bad.
Then, tonight, I looked at the Facebook group for HGSE, and my friend Aaron posted the video below under the heading “Writing Break!!!” For 1 minute and 58 seconds, I was on the couch eating apple slices.
The Street’s still got it.