Tag: Sesame Street

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Putting the Peaces Together

We shouldn’t have lost Bob McGrath this close to Christmas.

I know. There’s never a good time. But you know what I mean. Big Bird would understand.

If you or your kids grew up watching “Sesame Street,” you know Bob, who passed recently at the age of 90. Part of the adult cast, he was the music teacher with a gentle voice and a kindly manner. Sometimes he’d be introducing the latest “People in Your Neighborhood.” Sometimes you’d see him chatting, both out loud and in sign language, with his character’s deaf girlfriend, Linda.  Once, he famously helped explain the death of store owner Mr. Hooper – as much as anyone could, anyway – to a grief-stricken Big Bird, his own voice shaking as well at the passing of his real-life castmate.

In short, whether in good times or bad, he reflected a spirit of peace. The sort of spirit we celebrate now and really need more of.

I don’t just mean that Bob wasn’t violent. (You never got a lot of that on the Street, anyway.) I don’t even mean that he was quiet and soft-spoken. Peace means more than just “nobody’s fighting.” We’ve all been in uncomfortable situations where nobody’s arguing but nobody feels at ease, carefully keeping their guard up. Many parents know the moment when the kids are behaving with each other, but only because Mom and Dad are watching.

You have peace when you have community. Interconnection. Harmony in the most literal sense of the word: many different voices coming together to make a more beautiful chord. (As a good friend likes to point out, the old Greek word for peace comes from a verb that means “to tie” or “to weave.”)

You have peace when things are as they should be. Not because someone’s sitting on everybody else, but because everyone wants to help make them right. A world where … well, where you truly see the people in your neighborhood.

It’s not always easy. It certainly requires more than just a spirit of “If you don’t make trouble, you won’t get any.” Peace doesn’t do well in isolation. It needs someone to reach out to: to celebrate or console, to make right or support. It can soothe or call for justice, but it doesn’t just walk back into the house and close the door.

In other words, it’s a gift. Maybe one of the most important ones we can give each other, at this time or any other.

Bob’s character spoke to people where they were, whether that required ASL or the ability to connect with a 6-year-old. From what I can tell, the real Bob did exactly the same. People like that matter, especially in a day where so many chasms keep erupting.

And when they leave, that spirit doesn’t have to leave with them. It’s up to us to keep it going and help it spread.

Even when it hurts to remember that missing neighbor.

It’s fitting to end this in his own words, from the Mr. Hooper episode:

“You’re right, Big Bird. It’s … it’s …  it’ll never be the same around here without him. But you know something? We can all be very happy that we had a chance to be with him, and to know him, and to love him a lot when he was here.”

May that be said of all of us.

Peace, everyone.

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Crash Landing

Before Disney and the heirs of Jim Henson sic an army of googly-eyed lawyers on me, I need to be clear about one thing. Cookie Monster did not eat my computer. But his disco past has a lot to answer for.

Yes, you read that right. And no, I have not been eating any brownies of questionable origin.

Like many celebrities, the Muppets cut a disco album in the ’70s. Two disco albums, in fact, which should demonstrate just how close to Armageddon the world was teetering in those days. And in the second album, with the shocking title of“Sesame Disco!”, the Big Blue One himself took the mic for the most heart-rending disco ballad since “Disco Duck.”

I speak, of course, of the immortal “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco.”

There are portions of one’s childhood that remain unforgettable. And if we ever perfect mechanical telepathy, scientists will discover that entire sectors of my brain are permanently tattooed with a thumping rhythm and the words “Me lost me cookie at the DIS-co! Me lost me cookie in the BOO-GIE MU-SIC!” So naturally, as an adult, I used the vast and awesome power of the Internet to inflict this on others.

My wife Heather nearly lost her own cookies laughing. It became a running family joke, something to dial up when nothing of less epic silliness would do. Which made it inevitable, of course, that we would introduce it to Missy.

At this point, there are three important things to understand about our developmentally disabled ward. Missy loves the Muppets. Missy also loves disco.

But Missy does not necessarily love the Muppets singing disco.

And so, when I mixed it into an evening YouTube session, Missy giggled. Then smiled. Then decided the joke had gone on long enough and punched the power button.

Now, even in these permissive modern times, there are still a few things you just don’t do. You don’t pull a car key out of the ignition at 80 mph. You don’t wear black and silver at a Broncos rally. And you really don’t turn off a computer in mid-stream.

“Wait!”

Too late.

When I brought everything back up, my word-processing files were among the walking wounded. About half of them had to be saved into a new format, document by painstaking document, in order to be usable at all.

I have seen many a parent recite under their breath “I love my child … I love my child … I love my child.” I think I’m beginning to understand.

But here’s the funny thing. It was worth it.

It was worth it because of the time spent laughing with Missy, however wrong a turn it may have taken.

It was worth it because of the enforced trip down memory lane. As I patched and ported my files, I discovered columns I’d forgotten I’d written, scripts I hadn’t performed in years, even parodies that made me smile one more time.

Most of all, it was worth it for the chance to underscore, without mortal injury, two fundamental truths of parenting: that accidents happen, and that even when they do, your people are still more important than your things.

Hug, forgive and learn.

I think if more of us remembered that, this would be a nicer world.

There’s still a few repairs to make. But it’ll be OK. Both the family and the machine will survive to make more memories, even if it occasionally takes a minor crisis to do so.

Sometimes, that’s just the way the Cookie Monster crumbles.