Sam’s Story: Week 78

I’m sitting here about to lose my mind, mainly because I can’t get the freaking Elmo’s World theme song out of my head. Sam has been watching a lot of Sesame Street lately, which means I have been watching a lot of Sesame Street lately. The show’s cross-generational longevity is pretty amazing, as I remember watching it as a kid in the 70s. Elmo (or as Sam calls him, “Ella!”) didn’t debut on the show until around 1985, though, so I was largely ignorant of that little red-haired freak until recently.

Actually, I give the little guy a hard time, but I actually kind of like him on balance. The Elmo’s World segment is kind of cute if overly predictable, but I guess that’s a combination kids love. I do hate, however, the bit with those vaudeville rejects Mr. Noodle and his brother, Mr. Noodle. Every day Elmo has a question about something and every day he thinks it’s a good idea to ask Mr. Noodle. This is surprising, given that all available evidence suggests that Mr. Noodle is substantially retarded. Yet Elmo insists on asking simple questions like “How do you wash your hands?” or “How do you hop on one foot?” And every day the mental midget on the other side of the window proves incapable of answering even these simple queries. So every day I stand in front of the television and scream at him until Samantha bursts into tears.

Other things I hate about Sesame Street include the song that finishes off every visit to Elmo’s World. Basically he takes the name of the show’s theme and just repeats it to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” Here’s the lyrics to the show about fish: “Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish. Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish. Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish, fish fish fish fish fiiiish!” God, I hate that. Let’s see, what else? Oh, I hate Baby Bear, because he pronounces all his Rs like Ws. I especially hate the segment where he does “Hero Guy” –excuse me “Hewo Guy”– bit. Stupid bear.

Sorry, this is supposed to be about Samantha, isn’t it? Look, here’s some pictures.

Not much else to report on the Sam watch. Her vocabulary is growing and she seems to recognize colors, as she will usually point to them correctly when prompted or return with the correct ball when asked to “get the green one” or somesuch. The other day I had a collection of multicolored shapes –green, blue, yellow, and red– and I asked her to point to the black one to see what she’d do (there was no black one). She looked at the shapes, looked at me, looked at the shapes, then curled up her lip and gave me the biggest “hey, screw you, pal” look I’ve seen yet. I’m so proud.

The discipline thing I described last week has been going just about as well as it was then, except that I think Sam is figuring out how to game the system. If she thinks that we’re not paying enough attention to her, she’ll often run over to the couch and start endangering her own life by standing up on it and teetering around. She does this, I think, because she knows it’s a sure-fired way to detach my butt from the recliner and say her name really loudly. As soon as I get up, though, she plops back down to a safe position, a big grin and a “this is easy!” expression on her face. Maybe I’ll start telling her that if she stands on the couch that Elmo die. See if that works.