Happy Birthday To All My Sesame Street Friends

On November 10, Sesame Street celebrates its 40th birthday. Hard to believe I was two years old when it started. Even harder to believe that I still remember all of the words to all of the songs in the little box set of records that — even stranger — Dave also had as a child and has kept in tact all these years. (See photos above)

In many ways, the Sesame Street gang was my first group of friends and my first teachers. Sure, I had my own people in my neighborhood (in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood, oh who are the people in your neighborhood …). But Bob, Susan, Gordon, Grover, Big Bird, Oscar, and all the rest — they were there every day to teach me new things and have some laughs.

I learned my first Spanish words from Luis (Emilio Delgado) and Maria (Sonia Manzano). Susan (Loretta Long) and Bob (Bob McGrath) taught me all sorts of things about making friends, sharing, caring, and generally being a good person. Gordon (Roscoe Orman) was probably the first black person I knew in any sort of meaningful way as I grew up in a predominantly white community. I got to sing along with Oscar about loving trash and going for a ride, goin’ riding in a car. The Count tried to help me with math but that was nearly impossible, even in my formative years. And on those gloomy days when there was no one around to play, there was always the “Somebody Come And Play” song to cheer me up. I’m not sure my mom and dad realized what a gift they were giving me by allowing me to watch Sesame Street — or maybe they did. Maybe they enjoyed it as much as I did because, in my humble opinion, you don’t have to be a child to love the show.

Jeff Moss, who died in 1998, was the head writer of Sesame Street. He gave kids who grew up with Ernie and Bert songs like “Rubber Ducky” and “People in Your Neighborhood”. When I was watching Sesame Street from the sofa or the floor in our family room, I didn’t know that there were writers who wrote scripts for television shows. I probably figured all of those furry characters made it up on the fly.  But those episodes were most definitely a spark for my imagination and started me down the path of creating my own imaginary stories and characters.

I’m quite positive that the puppet show that Pam Honold and I developed for our fourth grade religion class was influenced by Sesame Street. We wrote the script, we made felt puppets on popsicle sticks, and we wowed the class with our tale of one of the seven deadly sins – gluttony. The MC (that’d be main character) ate all of the other animals in the kingdom due to the aforementioned issue with gluttony and ended up exploding in a flurry of cotton and felt. Meanwhile, Pam and I were behind some curtained desks laughing uncontrollably, something we did a lot and something that got us nearly kicked out of weekly Mass by Mrs. Brunswick. It was my first fiction reading and my first taste of sharing my work in a public forum. I wish I still had the script and remembered the name of our MC. Those details are gone but the lesson in sharing creativity with others remains with me, even now when someone tells me they enjoyed a piece of my writing. I credit Sesame Street for nourishing my imagination and pushing me toward writing.

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It’s awesome that Sesame Street continues to educate, encourage, and influence kids today. And it’s awesome that people in their 40s, like Dave and I, still can sing, sing a song, and not worry if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear, just sing…like Bob told us to do all those years ago. There are pelnty of newspapers and media outlets covering the big birthday bash. Newsy.com (the link above) supplies an interesting synthesis of news stories that point out the various angles the media is taking on the way Sesame Street has changed over the years and whether old episodes are still relevant today — I believe they are, even if kids are shown riding bikes without helmets!

In honor of the Street’s birthday, we might just hook up the old record player (yes, we still have one) and play the whole box set. We might remind ourselves that we’ve got two eyes, one, two, they’re both the same size…I’ve got two arms, one, two… 

Thanks Sesame Street for helping so many of us become the people in our neighborhoods that we are today! Happy birthday!