"C" Is For Cookie

Although I doubt it has been done so intently as it is now, with Tickle Me Elmo, Hokey Pokey Elmo, Limbo Elmo and the like, Sesame Street has merchandised itself pretty much from the beginning. As a child, I was the proud owner of three Sesame Street record albums (big vinyl discs, with two sides, played on a turntable where a needle skimmed over the grooves, for those too young to have ever owned one). I loved those records and they were well played. I can’t say for certain, but I think “Bert & Ernie’s Sing-A-Long” was probably my favorite.

Three years ago, I went looking for these records in my dad’s record collection. They were all still there! I brought them home and we played them in preparation for making them into CDs to play while we were babysitting my nephew. They are scritchy and scratchy and “Bert & Ernie” and “Big Bird Sings” have a couple of songs that have skips in them, but for records that are almost 30 years old and, as I said, very well played, they were in remarkably good shape. “Bert & Ernie” got put on CD then and the other two, plus a mint copy of “Bert’s Blockbusters” that I bought on eBay, were put on CD last year, after Alison came along. We have played them a lot in the last year or so, mostly when we’re in the car. I never realized, until Friday, that Alison is beginning to recognize the songs. We were watching Sesame Street on Noggin when all of the sudden, there is Cookie Monster starting to sing “C Is for Cookie.” Hooray! Now I’ll be able to hear the words that the record skips over and I have long ago forgotten! Alison is totally entranced. And then.....the cable goes goofy and we lose the station. I was disappointed and Alison was down right mad. She wanted to hear that song, and there was nothing I could do to get the station back. Whatever the problem was, it only lasted a couple of minutes, but that was long enough for Cookie to be gone when the show came back on. Fortunately a 15 month old has a short attention span, so she was just glad the show was back on. I guess we’ll have to be content with our scratchy, skippy CD until the next time we see Cookie Monster singing his song on TV.