kind of obnoxious.

I'm stuck here, you know, and my fingers are ready to write if only my mind will tell them just what. I sit and think, think and sit, do both those things in any sort of order you please. Like on those old Sesame Street cartoons where you'd have five apples, and they'd show you ten different ways to arrange them, but you'd still have five apples no matter how you placed them.

It wasn't always apples. Sometimes it was blocks, and I seem to remember penguins or lions. It was always good and wholesome things. They never showed you ten ways to arrange five shotguns or five martinis. No matter how you arrange five martinis, you'll still end up with a hangover.

I learned a lot of things from that show. Nothing about martinis, but many useful things nonetheless. I learned how to sound out words phonetically, lots of useful Spanish and sign language words, and not to bug Oscar when he's in a bad mood, which is always.

I can tell whether Hispanic-owned stores are open or closed thanks to that show. There was this one segment where this man was in his house, but he could never get anything done because everything was "abierto," which means open. The wind kept coming into the house, all his dishes fell out of the cabinets, his milk got spoiled, and his dog kept running away. He sang a little song about it. Then later, there was a sequel, and everything was "cerrado". He couldn't leave or get any food out of the fridge or have himself a glass of spoiled milk because everything was closed. His dog came back, but couldn't get in. That guy had a hard life, but I managed to profit from his misfortunes by learning some new words.

I wached Sesame Street until I was at least eight or nine years old. I remember the kids in my second grade class making fun of me for it, but I didn't care. And since I was cool back then, I made Sesame Street cool again for the students in Mrs. Banks' second grade class.

I was really popular in elementary school. The girls wanted to be my friend and the boys wanted to hold hands out by the monkey bars. I liked boys a lot, too and I liked that they liked me, though I'm not sure why they did. I think I might have been obnoxious. I had a terrible conquering attitude about males in the early days, like Sex in the City: The Early Years. I remember deciding one day that I was going to "go with" every single boy in my first grade class. I was working down the list and I got to Ray and decided that maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all. Poor Ray. I got sick of boys completely in the third grade and wouldn't have them for three and a half years. By then I was in middle school, and my popularity didn't carry over. I think the boys just figured out that I was kind of obnoxious.

I had stopped watching Sesame Street by then. I was on to more mature TV material, like Darkwing Duck and TaleSpin. Darkwing Duck was a great show, and I was sad when they moved it to 3:00, since I didn't get home til 3:30.

Sometimes I still watch Sesame Street. It's still a good show. I like the old clips the best, the ones I remember from when I was little. The new stuff is good, too, but doesn't have the sentimental value, I guess. Or maybe I 'm just too familiar with the idea of addition being commutative and it doesn't enthrall me the way it used to. I have an impressive mp3 collection of Sesame Street songs and clips, and I listen to them while I'm working on my Calculus 3 homework. I like the irony of that.

And my roommates, they make fun of me for it, but I don't care. Sesame Street is still cool, and this time I have very little to do with it.