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Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
Sesame Street is...40??? If 50 is the new 40, or 80 is the new 60, then turning 40 hardly matters as a milestone birthday, unless of course, minding your own business on a mid-day lunch break from editing, you hear that SESAME STREET is turning 40. For some reason, this news stopped me in my tracks. It was that kind of day. Later on, the same radio would report the undeniably premature death of an actress, age 45, engaged in the living of life, learning how to ski. Perhaps you see no connection between tragic news of a death and news that a beloved children’s show has been on TV for four decades. I do, and yes, quite possibly because I am also on the crest of turning 40. The mortality-awareness program begins in earnest. A personal event of no worldly consequence, I agree, but when the radio began playing clips from Sesame Street, the intensity of my response surprised me. Ontario Today is a radio phone-in show hosted by the lovely Rita Celli, who quickly suggested, post-clip, that Kermit The Frog as intrepid reporter may well have inspired her own career choice down the line. Why I love Rita Celli. And Kermit: one of the most influential frogmen of his time.
A number of freelance writers, editors and actors I know tune into the CBC for company as they eat lunch in their homes or studios, whether over sinks or at table. Self-directed as it is, freelance life doesn’t offer the built-in lunch-room camaraderie of official employment. You’re often alone and that has serious advantages over exposure to inane office politics, except when the radio reminds you that Sesame Street is turning 40 and so are you. Grab the sink, Elizabeth, the big one’s coming. [You must be THIS old to get THAT joke. And if you don’t know who JFK was, we probably won’t get along, even though he was assassinated before I was born.]
Seems like just yesterday you were sitting cross-legged in front of the TV [not too close, mind], enraptured. At the babysitter’s house, in your own house, a plate of some trans-fat-laden cookies within reach, or the browning corpse of an apple core abandoned in the carpet-grass of 70s shag. Challenged by one-word Spanish lessons, dazzled by psychedelic animations, amused, always amused by the chef falling down a staircase with “SEVEN blueberry pies!” For me, the urban landscape of Sesame Street [thank GOD it was NOT called Rural Route Sesame 1,2.3] was a huge thrill. I was a small-town child with a preternatural desire for city life. Sesame Street confirmed what my soul suspected: a world beyond white people, where languages other than English were spoken. [With apologies to Chez Helene, which also guided the way, en francais.] A world with trash cans and a corner store that sold egg creams and seltzers, where the elderly proprietor Mr. Hooper would die and we’d all have to find a way to understand, and help Big Bird through HIS grief. Like other kids, I was insanely jealous of John-John and wondered how the hell one secured a spot beside our most-beloved Grover, eventually usurped by Elmo. I suspected that Sesame Street was pretty far away, nowhere near my mostly-white Ontario hometown, and somewhere I also knew that puppets were, you know, fake, distant relatives of Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy, and therefore hard to commune with. But it didn’t matter: Sesame Street and the colourful, eclectic gang both human and puppet: these were teachers, friends, old reliables.
One woman who called into the CBC described the experience of showing her own toddler the first few episodes of Sesame Street, now available on DVD. Apparently he enjoyed the experience in spite of what now seems like plodding, archaic technology. The stories grabbed him just as they grabbed us 30-40 years ago. Her only moment of shock came when her son, a child of now, saw a rotary-dial phone and had absolutely NO idea what it was. The ring isn’t even the same. Pretty sure I wasn’t alone in being speechless at the realization that yes, it’s happening, we’re not that old yet we are, officially from another time. A time before cordless phones, internet, cell phones, voice mail hidden inside the phone itself as opposed to some tape-eating machine. The befuddlements of new technology for the ‘old’ and the “what the hell is that ancient object?” confusion of the young: it reminds me of trying to help my late friend Helen as she navigated new-fangled [trust me, kids today don’t even KNOW that lingo] technology.
When I was born, Helen would have been facing her 40th birthday: The year that Sesame Street hit the living rooms and rec rooms of North America and stepped in as the most influential children’s show of all time. Helen with her rotary-dial phone still plugged into the wall when she let me into her later life, pre-80. Sesame Street, Intergenerational Edition was what we had going on, as friends. I talked her into a touchtone cordless phone which she then called me on to shout about how she couldn’t figure out how to use it, and the damned internet was down again, did I know? We actually paused to watch a new episode of Sesame Street one afternoon when I was over and she was surfing with her “goddamned remote.” I was put off by Elmo and Helen, who lived out her childhood in Depression-era Toronto before TV was even a THING, shrugged and went back to complaining about Jerry Springer.
Sesame Street’s theme song floated through the radio speakers. Made me stop eating and smile, amazed and sad at how hyper-speed only seems to kick in when you’re being told “Your life is just beginning! Oh my god, a woman at 40 is a thing of beauty, power, just wait!” Forty years later, far from the cross-legged debut of life, I’m still trying to learn Spanish, still have a passion for brownstone apartment buildings, and I can still quote, from heart, far too much dialogue and far too many song lyrics from the brainchild of Jim Henson and his life-loving, kid-savvy band of “hippies.” I believe if that show taught us anything, it was love, and to somehow, essentially, find a way to be yourself. Doubt me? “It’s Not Easy Being Green” is the anthem of many a freelance soul. Just ask. Jim Henson was an 'unemployed' bum too, once upon a time.
Listening to Cabrone, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Get A Life, Freestylers
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