Sunny Days Indeed

By Jennifer Poenix

This Saturday on Between You and Me, the topic is TV shows. I watched a lot of TV when I was growing up. A lot of TV. Do I regret this? Not really, although I suppose I could have been doing things that were far more constructive. Like what, I don’t know.

If I had to list a favorite show of all-time, it would be Sesame Street. That show meant everything to me when I was small. It’s not as good as it used to be though. It’s much less focused on letters and numbers these days. My son Zane knows the characters from books and other various items I have handed down to him. I’m not sure he watches the show at daycare, but I’ll let him watch it very occasionally at home. We watch old episodes and clips on DVD: Sesame Street Old School, Volume 1. (Here’s hoping that Santa brings Volume 2.)

One time, I was absolutely convinced that Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, etc were coming to my house for supper. I have no idea where I got this notion from, but there it was. I started pulling extra chairs up to the dining room table. I kept looking out the window, waiting for them to arrive. My mom thought I was just playing, so she played along with me. She started putting food on the table. “Wait!” I yelled. “They’re not here yet!” It was then that she told me that they weren’t really coming to our house. It was just in my imagination. I sobbed through the rest of supper.

I don’t watch very much television anymore, and I'm more than ok with that. We live where there is no cable and I cannot justify paying for satellite. We have an antenna outside and it currently picks up 3-4 stations, depending on where it is pointed. We’ll see what happens when the FCC requires stations to go digital in February. I watch The Amazing Race and The Office regularly and that’s about it. Besides Sesame Street.