sesame_street raze i've forgotten the lessons the people and puppets on my tv screen were trying to impart that day. what i learned had nothing to do with sharing, diversity, or perseverance. it was about heat. i wanted to know what the metal coils that made rings on the roof of our oven felt like. i touched the tip of one finger to the burner my mother was using to boil a pot of water and all my thoughts ran away from me. i didn't cry. i sat and stared at the carpet i crawled across before i knew what words were, young flesh flushed and blistered but unbroken. 260714 ... ovenbird When I was about to turn five and make my way to Kindergarten my mother began to worry that the absence of a television in our house would impact my ability to navigate social interactions with children my own age. It seemed imperative that I know about Sesame Street. How was I supposed to relate to the other kids without at least a rudimentary understanding of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch? So she bought a television, and put it on her dresser and I would watch from the cozy depths of her double bed, which seemed an opulent thing to have from my small perspective, and she would make me call her every time Bert and Ernie came on, because they were her favourite. And so I went to school knowing about The Count and Mr. Snuffleupagus and Grover and the Cookie Monster. And it made no difference at all. The damage, if it can be called that, was already done. I was strange and observant, bookish and prone to talking too much. I wanted to run my fingers over every single thing in this surprising world. Sesame Street only revealed my relative disinterest in television. It never did come to hold any appeal. I still struggle to relate to people my own age. I haven’t watched any of the shows they’re bingeing and, if I could, I would throw the television away, walk into the woods and ask the crows to raise me. 260715 what's it to you? who go blather from