It turns out you can gain important insights into people by discussing the Muppets.
Last week, my little sister said to me, “I have my eye on a cookie monster tote bag and I’m determined to get it.”
She teaches at a high school in Austin, Texas, and she explained that the school was pulling names for the teachers to win some donated items, one of which is the cookie monster tote bag. She continued, “It was never fair that Mom and Dad always gave you cookie monster stuff and they gave me Oscar the Grouch.”
Flashback to Christmas morning: 1977. I run into the living room, with its orange shag carpet and plastic-covered furniture, and see immediately that my dream has come true.
Sitting in my gift section, with 6 kids each of us have our own gift area, is my dream gift:
A large stuffed cookie monster with huge googly eyes that rattled when he moved and a large book filled with 5 complete novels by Edna Ferber, including Cimarron and Showboat. Santa knew me very well: my two main passions have always been cookies and books.
I gasped and wrapped my arms around Cookie’s round body, noting how soft his fur was. His mouth could open, and I stuffed a cookie in there to see if he would secretly eat it when he came to life each night while I slept, but alas, he never broke character.
(It’s true—until I was around 10, I thought all my stuffed animals secretly came to life at night and went to the kitchen to eat and talk, a sort of “Stuffy-Hootenanny.” I really wanted to participate, but I never could catch them in the act.)
That Christmas morning my sister’s gift area held a furry green Oscar the Grouch. She loved that stuffy and slept with him for years… (although maybe I’m mixing memories, and it wasn’t Oscar she slept with, but her current husband who could easily be called Oscar the Grouch and the name would fit.)
(I don’t know why I’m saying current, she’s only had one so far.)
So back to the Cookie Monster tote bag, and my sister complaining about the fairness of my parents giving her Oscar and me Cookie.
“They were doing some psychic typecasting,” I replied. “They knew you were going to grow up and live in a trash can and be a grouch.”
“Oh and they knew you were going to grow up and be obsessed with cookies?”
“Exactly. Or maybe the gift of Cookie Monster is what caused me to love cookies so much? This is some deep Matrix-style philosophy. Did my mind bend the spoon? Does the spoon even exist? Can one eat a hot melted cookie with a spoon and pretend it doesn’t exist, therefore it has no calories? This requires some deeper pondering, and to truly think deeply, I need a cookie.”
My sister laughed. “Do you remember Oscar’s mother used to come by to visit him in his trash can, to make sure he was as grouchy as ever? She worried that the other puppets would turn him into a nice guy, and he would sometimes scare her by using the word ‘please’.”
“And she would wash his mouth out with vanilla ice cream.”
“I wish someone would wash my mouth out with vanilla ice cream.”
“And throw in a few cookies for good measure. Did you know that Cookie Monster has a British cousin? His name is Biscuit.”
“A biscuit sounds really good right now.”
“With clotted cream and strawberry jam.”
Who knew my sister secretly harbored jealousy over my Cookie Monster?
I guess that makes sense. I was always jealous that Mom always bought Marlise the pink underwear while I was given the blue. Marlise also always received the prettier dolls. That could be partly my fault since I always chose the teddy bears with crooked noses, or the ugly dolls that tugged my heart strings. When I was at one of the million Mormon craft fairs I was forced to attend and saw a table full of homemade dolls, there was always one that wasn’t as cute as the others. And when I say “not cute,” I mean the type of face that gets up in the night and stabs me with a kitchen knife. But I’d feel sorry for it, and I would beg my Mom to let me bring the misfit home so I could properly love it. (Now that I think of it, I grew up and started doing it with real people.)
In any case, before I hung up with my sister, I said two little words, two little words that always delight her and always make her get up and dance. Those two little words? “Mahna-Mahna,” one of The Muppets most famous songs and one that my sister loves.
A few minutes later, my friend Cristie called and when I told her about the Cookie Monster vs. Oscar the Grouch conversation, she said, “I always loved the purple one.”
“Grover?”
No, not Grover.”
“Count… what was the Count’s name?”
“Dracula.”
“His name wasn’t Count Dracula! That’s the one in Transylvania!! This Count just counts.”
(At this point we are laughing so hard we can barely understand one another.)
“Well I know it’s not Count Chocula.”
“OMG, Frankenberry, Count Chocula… now I’m craving cereal.”
“Snuffleupagus.”
“Snuffleupagus wasn’t purple! He was a shaggy brown elephant creature.”
“I know, but I always like his long eyelashes because they reminded me of my Dad.”
Cristie’s Dad is a tough retired FBI agent who actually brought down some top mobsters, and I’m fairly sure no one is noticing his eyelashes but Cristie. Or at least I never noticed his eyelashes because I was always too busy asking him some of my favorite questions: “Have you ever handcuffed someone? Who’s the worst criminal you have ever arrested? What did they do? How exactly do you handcuff someone who’s trying to get away?”
“Hmmmm, I would never think of your Dad as Snuffleupagus. He’s not fluffy enough.” But now I can’t get the visual out of my mind: Cristie’s Dad as the large bumbling mammoth.
In a way it made sense. As Big Bird’s best friend, Mr. Snuffy would enter the scene and help Big Bird water his higher plants, the plants he couldn’t reach, with his trunk. Then he’d exit before the humans on the show saw him. Cristie’s Dad had a career doing the same thing—entering the scene, taking down criminals, then exiting the scene and going on his merry way.
I think you can learn a lot about a person by asking which Sesame Street character they resonate with.
I’m 53 years old, (or 52, I can never remember,) and I have Cookie Monster feet pajamas. I wear them in case I’m ever inspired to jump on the bed, smashing cookies in my mouth while saying, “Nom-nom-nom-nom.”
I still relate to Cookie Monster, and was perturbed when they turned Cookie into Vegetable Monster. I mean, I love vegetables and I want everyone to eat them and be as healthy as possible.
But don’t mess with Cookie Monster.
He’s full of wisdom I still live by:
1. Count your cookies, not your problems.
2. Early bird gets the worm. But cookie tastes better than the worm. So let me sleep in.
3. No cry because a cookie is finished. Smile because cookie happened.
4. Home is where the heart is. The heart where the cookie is. Math clear: Home is the cookie.
The truth of my life is… without cookies I too am just a monster.
