Sesame Street

I am so glad that Sesame Street is still around.

Cartoons, and children's programs in general, have just gotten weird, and in many cases even violent. What a relief it is to know that Sesame Street airs faithfully each morning, teaching our children about things like numbers and letters, manners and feelings. Watching it as an adult, I have a grateful admiration for the geniuses who have thought to bring in celebrity guests to appear on the show. The celebrities are not purple dinasaurs or yellow sponges with an obnoxious giggle. They are real celebrities. The lead singer, for example, of the B52s, leading a group of muppets in a rousing chorus of "Shiny Happy Monsters." Or Jim Carrey showing Elmo all of the things that he can imagine with a stick. Or Jeremy Irons singing a version of "Put Down the Duckie." I am sure that there were countless celebrity appearances on Sesame Street in my preschool days, but I wouldn't have known or cared who Louis Armstrong or Glenn Close were.

I did care about Big Bird, Snuffeluffagous, and Prairie Dawn. I cared about the monsters who were joined at the side and could never decide what they were going to do next. "Sweep!" "Movie!" "Sweep!" "Movie!" I cared about Grover teaching me the difference between "near" and "far," and how to spell by sounding out the words. My Dad is always quick to point out that my first education in the Spanish language started with Sesame Street. My first Spanish word, "agua." I cared when Mr. Hooper died of cancer, and cried along with Maria, Bob, Bert and Ernie.

For some reason, a certain little vignette that aired from time to time on Sesame Street has always stuck with me, and it came to use in a very peculiar way last weekend. I had made a home visit to draw some blood from a patient on Saturday. The blood was collected in a 1/2-inch tall lab tube. I sat in my car, took out the lab tube to label it with the patient's name and date of birth, and dropped it just behind the emergency break. In seemingly slow-motion, I reached for the tube but instead nudged it into the tiny hole that led to a dark abyss of Car Interior. I panicked. I opened the center console, which sits behind the emergency break, to see if there was a way through. No way through. I found that I could, however, peel out the flimsy plastic that lie behind the break, to expose the depths of the Car Interior. I saw my specimen, lying several inches below and wedged. I needed something that grabbed...running on adrenaline now, I foraged through my nursing bag and pulled out a tweezers. Idiot, I said to myself, as I tried in vain to fit my hand through the impossibly narrow space behind the break. How on earth did I expect a 2-inch tweezers to reach 6 inches down?

What I did next was recall that little lesson I learned on Sesame Street. I can picture it as clearly as if I was still five years old: there were 4 children huddled around a sewere grate in the street. One of them had dropped a penny and it landed just beyond reach. What they did to recover that penny was to chew a piece of gum, stick it on a string, and lower the gum down through the iron grate. They pulled up slowly, and cheered for the penny that was retrieved on the other side of the gum.

I reached for my Trident.

I chewed it and stuck it on the end of a capped pen, and tried to lower it with the tweezers. Idiot, I told myself again. 2 inches plus 2 inches did not equal 6 inches. Now, it did occur to me that I could just swallow my pride and walk back into the house and re-draw these labs. But I was getting close, I could feel it. I ran to my trunk, which is basically serves as a medical supply closet. I saw my solution, and opened the package to reveal a urinary catheter. A nice, long, stiff-plastic urinary catheter. With what I imagine was probably like the greedy look of a mad scientist, I pushed one end of the pen into the opening of the catheter; the other end of the pen still had my sticky gum attached. I lowered the catheter into that space, jiggled it around a bit, lifted it out carefully...and lost the gummed pen to the bottomless pit. It now rested on the lab tube of blood, wedging it down farther. Now I was mad.

I got out of the car, moved my seat as forward as it would go, and inspected the exterior of the plastic that housed my sought-after treasure. For the amount of money we spent on that car, it seemed to be cheap plastic. Now desparate, I clawed at the plastic where it met the floor of the car and pulled. Out came the pen cap. The gum. The rest of the pen. The tweezers. And....the lab tube.

I laughed maniacally, holding onto the tube tightly now, sweat beading at my temples. It was a scene out of dracula. Or maybe Count Dracula. Maybe the gum trick didn't work, but it led me onto crazier ideas that, inevitably, got me what I needed.

I see a 6-year-old little boy every Monday morning at the same time, during the second half of Sesame Street. In an effort to distract him from discomfort on the Monday following the incident, I shared my story with him. He and his parents listened intently to my tale. When I got to the triumphant end, his parents were laughing and shaking their heads in disbelief. But my little patient was strangely quiet. Then he said, "well, that would have been a great story, if it were true!"

Believe it, folks. Sesame Street will continue to teach me for years to come.