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| A monster ahead of his time: some days, I'd like to eat my phone, too. |
I took Rhea to the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens yesterday. First
things first: if you have any interest in the Muppets, do not hesitate to check
this out in the month or so it has left to run.
It's informative, entertaining, and perfectly pitched in regard to just
how far behind the curtain you're allowed to see. There's enough behind-the-scenes to whet your
curiosity, but not enough to ruin your enjoyment of the end product. It's a great exhibit, and a great celebration
of an amazing vision and body of work.
For Rhea, it was a no-brainer. She lives and breathes the Muppets. If one day she wakes to discover she's turned
completely to felt, I'd barely register a surprise. I'd have to figure out how to edge Walter out
of the picture at that point, but I'm sure that could be accomplished. Regardless, we'd been waiting for just the
right time to head on out to Queens and take it all in, and yesterday was the
day. In addition to the exhibit, our
entry fee yesterday entitled us to a theater screening of 1978's Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, a
special that's as close to Rhea's heart as Frosty
the Snowman or Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer or (insert favorite here) is to yours.
In general (and to over-generalize), our little family of two works like this: Rhea
is the idealist with the heart full of wide-eyed wonder, and I'm the sarcastic
realist that keeps us safe and grounded.
This is as it all should be: said unique qualities give us quite the
broad spectrum to work with when pooled.
So why, then, did I find myself getting a little choked up upon watching
Christmas Eve on Sesame Street for
the first time in several decades?
Because eons ago, it saved my faith in the holiday.
I was probably about six or seven. I'd reached that age where I'd naturally
begun to question the world around me.
I'd always been a curious kind of kid, and that was intensifying with
every passing year's worth of increased functioning and reasoning. At the time, my family lived in an
apartment. Cue the unanswerable
question: how does Santa drop off our
presents when we don't have a chimney?
A potentially catastrophic query; thankfully, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street's story is hinged around just this
sort of quandary. To this day my mother
- never a woman to mince words or over-hype something - refers to it as a
godsend.
It wasn't the nostalgia of seeing the special again that
made me choke up, as heartwarming as it was to revisit an old friend that I had
no idea I'd missed so much. I choked up
near the end, at the realization that Christmas
Eve on Sesame Street never actually answers the question. Therein lies its genius: rather than simply
fling a half thought out answer, it simply assures its audience that it's all
right not to fully understand everything; that some great things do not require
thorough explanation.
There's a core truth about the holiday season in there:
sometimes, it's just fine not to ask so many questions that you gyp yourself
out of the magic that surrounds you this time of year. I'm not taking about blind faith, nor religious
faith necessarily, and certainly not intelligent design and other such
lunacy. I'm talking about not being so
sour or proof-driven that you refuse to let slightly magical things just happen
sometimes, be it at the holidays or during the hottest week in August.
The message is a simple one, as applicable to adults as to
the children to whom it was primarily pitched: chill, and just let the elves do their thing, wouldya? Amen.
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