like most gen-x’ers, Sesame Street was my street. i learned a lot of truisms from Sesame Street and the characters that lived there.
i learned lessons about how things work (beet, beet, sugar beet), about emotions (i get mad, i get mad, i get mad…everybody gets maaaaad) and i learned about friendship and accepting people as they are, even if they are different from you.
most of all i loved ernie and bert. i loved the glimpses into their daily life; their squabbles, their mundane undertaking of sandwich making or trying to fall asleep when one snored and the other was a light sleeper.
maybe those wing-nuts on fox news are right—maybe ernie and bert even taught me never to raise so much as an eyebrow to same-sex relationships. who the hell knows? thanks for that added lesson if it is true.
as much as i loved watching two guys that looked like they were just kids like me, living a regular adult life, i have suddenly realized, my life is looking oddly close to theirs.
sometimes i feel like i am still a kid and the adults have left me home alone to fend for myself. i do a pretty good job at managing…i can go shopping, make meals, keep tidy and get to appointments on time and appropriately dressed…but i fear i am missing the substance that makes up adulthood.
i can do whatever i want whenever i want with whomever i want…hear that mom? i can (and often do) even eat raw cookie dough straight from the bowl! but is that the signifier of being an adult? how do you know you have really grown up? it isn’t turning 21, that’s for sure. is it having a child? well, by that definition i may never be an adult…
lately i feel this ennui growing…unlike the indolence i felt occasionally in my twenties, this feels more settled, more ingrained than a phase or a stage. is this adulthood- the persistence of a not quite defined discontent and a nagging melancholy? i don’t know…Sesame Street never mentioned ennui…
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