Published April 24, 2005 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
People from my generation grew up among monsters. Specifically, we grew up among the monsters of the educational TV show “Sesame Street,” including Oscar the Grouch, Grover and the Cookie Monster.
Of course, the 1982 episodes I remember were a little different than their modern counterparts. Back then, most of the characters smoked and I hold a dim memory of a character called “Asbestos Annie.”
“Sesame Street” taught me a lot, and continues to teach young people the basics of language, numbers and social interaction. The producers of the show have taken many opportunities to address important issues in terms understandable to children. This persists today with the reformation of Cookie Monster to educate people about the danger of childhood obesity.
Cookie Monster is the floppy blue creature that, predictably, craves cookies more than your average hand puppet. When he sees cookies, he feigns restraint, only to eventually burst into a wild display of baked good mastication that ends with the surly demise of all nearby cookies. That’s the shtick, and it’s worked for a long time.
Now, however, America faces a crisis of widening waistlines among young people. In response, Cookie Monster will soon learn, and recite, that “a cookie is a sometimes food.” The hope is that children will realize that their dietary choices impact their health.
This is an important lesson. I was a chubby kid in school and, since then, I’ve always had to work hard to maintain a healthy weight. Still, I don’t know that I’d blame my problems on “Sesame Street,” though there may have been cookies involved. I just don’t know how much impact one reformed blue monster will have in a world where kids see and hear thousands of pro-gluttony messages every week.
Cookies are indeed a magical food. For instance, I have never once put cookies on my shopping list, but always seem to have them around. At different times in my life, grocery lists included chips, beer, liverwurst, cheese, cigarettes, unwieldy jars of lard to be emptied with a serving spoon when the sun goes down – all things I should not have desired, but did. Still, I almost always have fast access to cookies somewhere in my house and there’s never been a paper trail.
For most of us, cookies represent the first forbidden fruit of our lives. No cookies until after dinner, right? This continues today, especially with the craze of “low-carb” diets. Cookies have so many carbohydrates that Atkins dieters have to wear gloves to handle them. But just like the kid who gets his fingers into the cookie jar, these dieters almost always have a lapse so severe as to make the Cookie Monster’s fits appear discreet. “C” is for carbs. Illicit, delicious carbs.
It’s all about moderation. Have you ever seen Cookie Monster eat? Sometimes, I get the feeling that he’s just a crude hand puppet, brazenly chomping at prop cookies so that the crumbs fly around in a happy-go-lucky manner. Perhaps if Cookie Monster just focused on chewing and digesting one cookie, he wouldn’t feel the need to tear through so many.
But then, would he be the Cookie Monster? He is not a complicated individual. He really only has two primary character traits – a strong desire for cookies and a lack of inhibitions in eating them, owing mostly to his status as a “monster.” Take either of those things away and he ceases to be Cookie Monster.
I know “Sesame Street” is trying to do its job in teaching kids important things in a fun way, but introducing them to irony at such a young age might be just a bit too much. Save something for the schools.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.