I was channel surfing one lazy afternoon not so long ago when I chanced upon Bert looking for his socks. After a short while, in came Ernie, asking, as always, what his friend was doing. I watched, transfixed, as my favorite orange boy with the endearingly mischievous laugh helped his often grumpy yellow friend find the missing pair of his sock.
My parents hired a nanny to look after me when I was a small child, but I grew up with the television as my babysitter. Some of my earliest memories were those spent sitting on the floor, my eyes fixed on the television screen as Big Bird and the Sesame Street kids learn about letters, shapes and colors with the lovable bald guy whose name my failing memory can no longer recall. I ate cookies as Cookie Monster ate his. I mumbled as lovable Elmo mumbled about things. I sang with Kermit the Frog and, much that I disliked him then, I learned about numbers from The Count.
Sesame Street was not just a TV show - it was a seminal part of my childhood. It was a teacher, a playmate, a babysitter. It laid down the foundation of my English language proficiency (I often tell my sister that one of the reasons why my English is better than hers is because I grew up watching Sesame Street, while she grew up watching Batibot, a Filipino adaptation). As I watched creatures - humans and puppets alike - of different colors, genders and kinds mingle with one another, I, unconsciously, learned about the beauty of diversity and the truth that friendship transcends categorization.
I sometimes manage to catch Let’s Play Sesame – this generation’s version of my beloved show - and I never fail to notice the modifications. Not only does it come with a new title, the set-up and the settings also have changed. Gone are the kids playing with hula hoops and skipping ropes. Now, they have computers for toys. Gone, too, is the infectious theme song (“Sunny day, I’m on my way…”) that I still sing as an adult, replaced by one that can be best described as monotonous.
It’s just natural for the show to evolve as time passes and as technology advances, but somehow, there’s something amiss with this new version of the Sesame Street. It surely looks sleeker than that of my generation, but it feels synthetic. It’s as if the show has been robbed of its humanness.
I don’t know what the kids of today think of their version, but I’m mighty glad that my Sesame Street was how it was back then.
