Beginnings

About ten years ago, before I had any children, I developed what could only be described as a most unusual obsession: locating, obtaining and - ultimately - watching the first-ever episode of Sesame Street.

Of course it goes without saying that like every other American born in the 1970’s, I loved Sesame Street. Bert and Ernie, Kermit the Frog, that mean bastard Oscar… they were all just as much a part of my family as my parents, my brother and my fish (named Sugar, who suffered quite the untimely demise at the hands of my brother’s Fisher Price baby vacuum cleaner - but that’s a story for another time). Yet in all my years and through all the hours of quality Sesame time I had amassed, I had never once seen how it all began.

Maybe Big Bird hatched from an egg or Super Grover used his magic powers to make the street appear; or maybe even Mr. Hooper fell asleep next to Suzanne Pleshette and dreamt the whole thing up. Either way, I wanted to see it - I had to know; so I scoured the Internet, looking for clues until finally I found someone on eBay selling a VHS cassette version of exactly what I was looking for.

The tape cost about $60, and when it finally arrived in the mail, I was like a kid on Christmas - tearing open the package, rushing into the living room, impatiently waiting for the cassette to play. And when it finally did I was crushed.

No bird’s egg.

No Super Grover.

No Suzanne Pleshette.

Oscar was orange and Big Bird was sort of goofy looking; but otherwise, the on-screen commencement of the single most identifiable children’s show on the planet was nothing special. I stopped the tape about five minutes in and realized: I wasn’t obsessed with Sesame Street… I was obsessed with beginnings.

Nice beginnings.

Clean beginnings.

Affixed, finite, “yes – this is where we’re starting from” beginnings - like Peter Parker getting bit by a radioactive spider, or Diane Chambers wandering into Cheers, or God creating the Heaven and Earth… or the unambiguous, unwavering declaration that Marley is, in fact, dead to begin with.

Which brings us to the present… in which I’ve begun writing a blog and you’ve (presumably) begun reading it; and to the extent that I will continue to write (which I will) and that you will continue to read (which I hope you will), I’d like to begin appropriately, with a clean beginning:

• I’m 33-years-old.
• I’m married (sorry ladies).
• My wife and I have five young children.
• We live in suburban Connecticut.
• I’m a writer.

And above all else: I’m a dork… because if searching for an obscure episode of a PBS children’s show doesn’t define dork-dom, writing a blog most certainly does.

Happy Beginning!