Sweeping the Clouds Away

"Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? " 

Television is a brutal business. I should know. I've worked in television news for fourteen years. And it is with the cold, calculated, cutthroat attitude of a network executive that My Director and I made a decision: We are no longer going to DVR Sesame Street.

Say it ain't so.

So long, old friends.

But it's true. Add Sesame Street to the long list of things Peanut has outgrown. Before this it was the stroller. (We even just took the gate at the top of the stairs down after realizing we were using it mostly for Luna and not Peanut.) But this...Sesame Street...was part of our every day lives. Part of our childhoods and part of hers. The characters we grew up with, the characters she grew up with, unceremoniously discarded after getting maximum enjoyment, like an empty cereal box. The other stuff was just that...stuff.

To be honest, this one hit me pretty hard. I wasn't ready to say goodbye. Are you ever? Those sunny days are over, replaced in the lineup by the likes of Hello Kitty. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but Sesame Street simply wasn't getting the ratings in our house anymore. And it was eating up precious space on the DVR. There were even favorite episodes from over the years that we had saved because Peanut would ask for them specifically.

Good Riddance, Kitty.

But she stopped asking. Even when I would suggest it, she'd ask for something else. Princess movies. Tinker  Bell. Or that wretched Hello Kitty, which I resisted every time. Hello Kitty is the fingernails on the chalkboard of children's entertainment. Worse, Hello Kitty is on Netflix. And she would specifically ask to watch it on the computer. This would seriously cut into my blogging and social media time.

And just as heartlessly as Peanut cancelled Sesame Street, one day Hello Kitty itself was gone. Vanished from the Netflix queue without warning. Peanut was devastated. But unlike Sesame Street, she wasn't ready to say goodbye. I must admit that while I was quietly rejoicing, I did feel badly for Peanut. This must be what it will feel like when that first punk boyfriend I hate breaks up with her. Then again, there will probably be rage to go with my joy when that happens.

To this day, Peanut asks for Hello Kitty. Yet it remains missing from Netflix. My Director says maybe one day we'll get her some episodes on DVD. I say over my dead body. Rest easy, Strawberry Shortcake. You're safe for now.

But THIS is getting old fast too:




It wasn't too long ago that Peanut came to me asking who my favorite Sesame Street character is. Here's how I answered.