14. the people in your neighborhood. or how the angry birds came to be.

thanks for bringing back the kooky vibe! this picture has me showing it off to every person who's passed by my desk here in the office, and so far i've gotten big smiles from everyone.: ) sesame street is something i have always dearly loved. my family used to own this whole set of hardbound sesame street books, which i know must cost a fortune now if it were still available, and reading them all had been one of the early finish-a-series goals i'd had in life. thinking how to describe it leaves me with a word that seems so inadequate and yet so right - it was good. deep down plainly simply good. not in the good vs evil sense, but it was good for the heart, (good for learning basic math, haha), good for learning manners, and it was therapy for my soul.

there was this story of bert playing the role of odysseus' penelope, with a wig of curls ridiculously angled over his long face, and after every cliffhanging volume he would be in one tragic dilemma after another, about to fall off a pirate ship's plank or bound tightly to a railroad track while smoke heralded an incoming train. (with him of course was ernie, the perpetually frustrating but disarmingly charming sidekick [or is it the other way around?] who invariable triggered these cliffhanger fiascos.) there was this monster who bullied passersby for jellybeans, and somehow i already knew that jellybeans were special even though i wasn't sure yet if they were real or imaginary. there was cookie monster with his lopsided eyes, still filling my heart to bursting with his gruff and messy cuteness. there was big bird teaching how to make the best banana bread, which i had finally tried doing a year ago and it was amazing.

you see, this post is really less about the angry birds but more of a homage to the friendly people in the neighborhood. i like the birds, but i am just very biased with unwavering affection for sesame street. this is a tribute, a love letter, from a girl who's now grown up, blogged from the other side of the world. well, perhaps not quite the other side of the world. these characters are from any person's perception of neighborhood, only as near as we claim them to be, on this side of the pacific or far across into the atlantic, they are as real, just as it was for the velveteen rabbit, as we love and believe them to be.

i love you forever, sesame street. i'll always think of you, with a lot of fondness, and not a little kookiness mixed in.: )