My First Huge Failure as a Parent

Speaking of solipsistic television personalities, I have a confession to make: My daughter, Sasha, despite all my efforts to keep her unaware of his existence, has fallen in love with Elmo.

This actually began several months ago. We’d be walking down a street and pass a toy store, and she’d see him in the window, wearing a leather biker jacket or just his plain old magenta fur, and she’d squeal “Elmo!” I don’t even know how she learned the name. Perhaps from her diapers? No, we never told her the Muppet’s identity. Maybe from school or at a playdate—who knows?

However she learned of him, Elmo is lodged in her consciousness. One of Sasha’s first complete sentences, in fact, was “It’s Elmo!” Ah, the elation, the defeat! Emphasis on defeat, for we’ve now given ourselves over to the fuzzy preschooler. Sasha now owns “The Best of Elmo” on DVD, and watches it with the kind of rapt attention she usually reserves for, well, nothing else. It’s like Ritalin for toddlers.

I try to look on the bright side. Sasha now recognizes Ernie, Cookie Monster, and, with surprising difficulty, Big Bird. (Come on, it’s a 7-foot yellow bird, a big bird, right, Sasha?) And she as yet possesses no Elmo toys, though I imagine the demands will arrive one of these days, screeched on the F-train as she spies another child with the Tickle Me edition. And then we’ll see how well I hold up.

Why do so many of us hate Elmo so much? I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, it’s less the gratingly high-pitched voice and the tendency to refer to himself in the third person. Or maybe the latter is a symptom of what makes Elmo so distasteful to me—his utter narcissism. In the Sesame Street world, everything revolves around the feelings and desires and talents of this overly cute little Muppet. Everything. Elmo hangs out with the stars (e.g., Julia Roberts) and is a genius painter whose masterpieces everyone covets, and fantasizes himself as the greatest tap-dancer who ever lived, and when he writes a song, he calls it “Elmo’s Song”:

• This is the song—la-la la-la—Elmo’s song.
• This is the song—la-la la-la—Elmo’s song.
• He wrote the music,
• He wrote the words.
• Thaaaat’s El-mo’s sooooooong!

Worse is when he invites Snuffy and Big Bird to sing along, substituting their own names for his. It seems natural, but then at the end they all wind up back to using “Elmo” and showering praise and attention on the creature, at the same time demeaning their own abilities. “I wish I’d thought of that,” says Big Bird, not at all sarcastically. It’s Elmo’s world—they just live in it.

Perhaps the worst part of this DVD (which Sasha only gets to watch once a day, at most) takes place near the end. Having given away all but one of his masterpieces, Elmo is confronted by a Honker who feels slighted at not receiving one himself. But, Elmo worries, if he gives the Honker the painting, what can he deliver to the Monster Art Show? He asks the “audience” for advice, and finally determines that the feelings of a friend are more important than the gallery show. Good! But as soon as the painting’s in the Honker’s hands, the mood turns again—now Elmo’s sad! Oh no! The little monster can’t go two seconds without maundering about his own circumstances. I hate him.

But I suppose my efforts to hide him from Sasha were all in vain, as are most attempts to shield our children from the realities of the world. And in the end, it probably doesn’t matter. After all, as a kid, I wasn’t allowed to have G.I. Joe toys, and look how I turned out.