The Muppets

I met The Muppets when I watched Sesame Street with my daughter. Sesame Street wasn't around when I was a kid. We became a Waldorf family. In Wally World, parents are strongly encouraged to ban tv. Some Waldorf schools literally ask parents to sign a written pledge that they will not allow their children to watch tv because if just a few children watch tv, it can influence the other children.  I remember a parent information evening when a passionately dedicated kindergarden teacher told us that there were studies that demonstrated that watching television literally generated nerve damage in humans' vision system.

Like someone acknowledging their addiction in a twelve step meeting, I admit that I allowed my daughter to watch television, even when she was very young.  I also want to speak in my own defense and assure my legion of followers (47? do 47 people, according to google blogger, actually follow this blog? who are they? and why?) that I did not let my kid watch as much tv as some parents.

I have never had a tv in my kitchen. When my daughter was just one, while visiting another mom and her one-year-old daughter for lunch, I saw that other mom, a very good parent, turn the kitchen television to Sesame Street. The TV appeared to be positioned so the kid in the high chair would have optimal viewing.  It had never occurred to me to stream tv at my baby when she and I were alone together. You know what I did in the early years when I was home alone with my baby most of the day?  I interacted with her. All day long. We did not always talk, esp. when, ahem, she was not yet talking. The first word she said that I thought I recognized was a brilliant attempt on her part to say Snuffleupagus, the big, and yet somehow cuddly, elephant-y creature then on Sesame Street. I am still sure she was trying to say Snuffleupagas. She was maybe seven months old. It was brilliant. All the baby books said I could expect one and two syllable words.  My little genius started out started out with five syllables!

Although, having said that, I feel compelled to qualify my bragging.  I believe babies are talking long before most of the adults in their lives clue themselves into the baby's talking.

When I was about fifteen, I dated a boy that I met at a dance at St. Leo's, a boy's high school in my teenage world.  He took me to his homecoming dance. Invitations to a boy's homecoming dance were high status, just one step below a prom invite. It was my first fancy dance. This boy, whose name I have forgotten, asked for my number at some sock hop. And he called. Gosh, so many boys asked for my phone number that never called. And it was such a pleasant surprise when he asked me to a big dance, to homecoming. After the homecoming, with neither of us having a particularly good time or bad time, we kept on 'dating'.  I did a lot of this kind of 'dating' in high school. A boy and I would get together on a Saturday evening, go to a movie, grab something to eat. Or do other stuff. But we never really connected. It was more like both of us were going through the motions of what we thought we were supposed to do. We were supposed to date. We dated.

So this homecoming boy and I kept dating after the fall homecoming, through Xmas and into spring. It got so 'serious' that the boy would sometimes come by my house on a Saturday afternoon, without having a date to go 'out' and we would just hang out. When this happened, though, I always had my baby sister around. Caring for her was my top priority in high school.  This boy seemed okay with having my baby sister around. 

One day, with this boy, my baby sister and I hanging out on a warm spring afternoon, he remarked that my sister was talking gibberish. She was not. She was talking quite a lot but nobody understood her but me. I had figured out that she had been talking for some time, but no one else in the family understood her. For some reason, I had figured out that she was rolling her verbal sounds off kilter.  I will write two sentences, one in the regular language way and one to demonstrate what my baby sister was doing when she was early verbal:

I like to play in the sand.  REGULAR WAY.

I ike pay sa. BABY WAY.

She thought she was saying, "I like to play in the sand" but everyone heard baby talk, gobbledegook.

Since I had that epiphany, I have always been able to understand babies before most people do.  I adjust how I listen.

So, back to the boy in high school. He said my baby sister wasn't talking, that she was uttering gibberish and I was just pretending she could talk, that I was making my dialogue with the baby up.  I went to our front door opened it and gestured for the guy to hit the road.  I could barely speak. First I had asked him to take it back. I was so indignant that he had insulted my baby sister. I don't think I was offended for my own sake, although, in hindsight, I see that he was commenting about me more than her. I doted on the baby.

He stood up and said "You are kidding, right?"

I shook my head in solemn silence, pointing out the door like the Grim Reaper.

He left. I never heard from him again.  As I have already indicated, we were not really involved with one another. We had both been going through the motions of dating without actually having a relationship.