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There are as many stories about Sesame Street as there are viewers out there who have gained from it. You are welcome to add to our patchwork quilt of posted memories, but please include your e-mail address for purposes of verification. We promise not to share your email address with anyone else, but we may post your comments on the website. Just complete the form at the bottom of the page. Thanks to everyone who have written in!
Letters to Michael from Sesame Street viewers past and present....
“My mom has always said that I didn’t cry when she told me Santa Claus wasn’t real, but I bawled when I found out Kermit was a puppet.” – Claire Dabbs
“We saw the program’s impact a few years ago when my wife suffered a massive stroke. During her rehab she used to watch Sesame Street to help her literally learn how to talk, read, count and sing again. We owe Sesame Street so much.” –Mike McCullars
“I’m not sure who enjoyed Sesame Street more, my children or me – and later my double yellow-head Amazon parrot, Wally, who was mesmerized. He loved Big Bird and called him by name.” – Vernadene Tolman
“As parents of a 19-year-old with autism, we can honestly say that Sesame Street has been our son Christopher’s favorite form of entertainment. He has viewed all of the videos over and over, watched hours of TV programs and read a majority of the Sesame Street books. As a graduation present, Chris received “Sesame Street Unpaved.” He stopped everything to read the book right at the party. Although Christopher is non-verbal, he used his Sesame puppets to communicate with us.” – Marie and Steve Bernhard
“Ever since I first saw Sesame Street as a young child in Connecticut I wanted to be Oscar the Grouch. There is a great story. My parents went out to dinner and my great-grandparents were babysitting me at home. When I went to bed, they were shocked to find that I needed my galvanized trash can to come with me to bed. I will never live that down.” – Sean O’Rourke
“Though I can’t remember how old I was, I remember when Mr. Hooper died. I was pretty young and it was my first experience with the concept of death. The show and my parents explained it to me well, and when my father passed away recently I used some of the memories to help my daughter understand such a difficult topic. It is amazing how this show can transcend the generations and continue teaching life’s important lessons.” – Melissa Blume
“Our oldest daughter, Andrea, born in 1982, was the biggest Muppet-Sesame Street fan. She was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 2 ½ years. We spent the majority of our days at Children’s Hospital of Milwaukee and don’t know what we would have done to make her stay more tolerable than to watch episodes of Sesame Street. In 1993, her last two days with us were spent with the nurses collecting every Sesame Street-Muppets VHS tape they could find in the hospital. We kept the tapes on every hour of the day, whether she was awake or not. She could no longer speak and only had use of her left arm those last days. But we still knew she was with us because every time a nurse or doctor would get in the way of the TV, her left arm would come up and try to move them away so she could see. My first thought when she passed was that now she could be with Jim Henson and his wonderful Muppets as often as she wanted. It was the most comforting thought we as parents could have.” – Cheri Wilhelms
“My mother tells me she had heard about Sesame Street and couldn’t wait for it to come on the air. She placed my older sister and me – at the age of two – in front of our tiny black-and-white TV in our Oklahoma home to watch the debut episode. We were fortunate to see the touring “Sesame Street On Stage” performance, and I will never forget being chosen to go on stage with Bob and Susan, to be the “Postman” during the “Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood” number. I was probably four and it definitely was a highlight in my childhood.” – Deborah Levy
“For some reason, my daughter, Sandra, thought Ray Charles looked like her great-grandfather. Every time she saw him she yelled “Gramps!” and got very excited. Gramps (a nice white man) was very honored to be mistaken for him.” – Ellyn Mayer
Editor’s Note: I was privileged to be Ellen and Sandra’s neighbor in Highland Park, Illinois. A more adorable child you’ve never encountered.
“The first time I saw Sesamstraat (the Dutch co-production of Sesame Street) I loved it right away. Having family and friends throughout Eurpoe I was lucky to see other co-productions, as well. I enjoyed them so much I chose a direction where I could learn the craft of making puppets. I now work with children and make Muppet-like puppets with them.” – Paul Bokdam
Editor’s Note: Paul writes from the Netherlands.
“The song on my sing-along tape, “We All Sing in the Same Voice” taught me lots about friendship during my 21 years of life with autism/Asperger’s Syndrome. Big Bird taught me about life and death. When Mr. Hooper died I was so sad. My grandfather died of Parkinson’s during my high school senior year. I felt like Big Bird did for Mr. Hooper, but I did have a chance to be with him from birth till graduation. When I prayed during the wake, I said “I’m going to miss you, Mr. Looper” in my brain but my mouth said “I’m going to miss you, Grandpa.” – Nick Haglich
“I grew up in Manhattan, and as a child I used to peek inside all the metal trashcans I passed to see if I could find where Oscar lived.” – Eva Schweber
“My grandfather watched Sesame Street with me every day and he loved Bert and Ernie as much as I did. He always told me Bert and Ernie stories at the dinner table in which I was their best friend and always wore a fabulous sequined dress. I have these great professional photographs of myself clutching Bert and Ernie dolls as if they were my lifeline. [One of those photographs] sat on his dresser until the day he passed in December 2000. At his funeral I placed a copy in the breast pocket of the suit he was wearing.” – Lauren Sendek
“One day I just tied my shoes all by myself. My mom couldn’t believe it and asked where I learned that. I told her David [Northern Calloway] taught me.” – Jenny Fryer
“I was so enamored by that cookie-gobbling blue monster that my parents thought it would be cute to call me Cookie instead of Victoria, my real name.” – Cookie Acot
“I was in high school when Mr. Hooper died. I cried when I heard about it. It was like my grandfather died.” – Dave D. Cawley
“We had Maria and Louis’s wedding day marked on our calendar and celebrated with a party at our house.” – Kathy Chapell
“My mom convinced us to like tomato soup in the 70’s by calling it Ernie Soup.” – Nate Jacobs
“When I was little, I wanted to run away from home and live on Sesame Street, not that I was trying to get asway from family but because it was the best place to be.” – Esther Wilbanks
“I still remember the first Sesame Street episodes I ever saw, when my single mother was dragging me from town to town in the dreary Midwest trying to find her own poor soul in the bars and and leaving me behind in motel rooms with the TV on all day and night in the way early ‘80s.
“I would become so engrossed with the Sesame Street neighborhood, wondering – hoping --that someday in our travels, we would end up in an environment like the one the show invented. A place with friendly adults and peers that all convened in front of buildings that had stoops, all the vastly different cultures, and -- most importantly -- positive male role models.
“So when I was 15, when my mother finally and permanently chose her bottle over me, I consciously committed myself to finding the happiest place I had known all those years, those stoops, which to my surprise really existed in NYC.
“I went and never turned back.
“Another 15 years later, as a 30-year-old painter/illustrator living, loving and thriving In New York, I now know how my internal magnetism to this city works. I can walk down Greenwich Street in the Village if I please, and see all of the real life "Big Birds" and "Snuffleufagi" (plural?)
“I need to pull me out of a blue mood. Alternately, I can walk down St. James Street or Washington Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn with the really huge, majestic brownstones, and feel like I'm two-and-a-half feet tall all over again.” – Shannon McGregor
“I don't actually remember this, but my mother swears to its veracity. When she went back to work after I was two or three years old (this would have been about in 1980), my grandmother often watched me during the day. I would sit there watching Sesame Street. One day, as Mom was picking me up, my grandmother happened to change the channel. When the numbers of the new channel appeared in bright, orange numerals over the knob, I shouted them out. "16!" Surprised, my grandmother changed the channel again. "17! 18!" I kept counting as she kept changing the channel. All Mom and Grandma could figure is that Bert and Ernie had taught me well.” – Blake Petit
Editors Note: I love to count. Bah-hah-hah.
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