My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [1]
This is my story, but it’s also Elmo’s. Elmo connects with people on a level beyond any other character I’ve performed, and I think I know why. Though he represents youthful curiosity and innocence, behind his childlike simplicity you’ll find the wisdom of an old soul, an unfailing sense of humor (and the laugh to go with it), and a loving, lovable hero with a heart worthy of any fairy tale. You’ll also discover, as I have, that Elmo is a teacher whose lessons can have a lasting value for adults, not just for the countless children he reaches each day.
What most of us envy about kids is the simplicity of their early years, when having a close family, friends to play with, and unlimited new worlds to discover are the only ingredients needed for a happy life. We long for those days when we would speak our minds and do our thing without worrying about the consequences, mostly oblivious to the past and the future. Children, after all, are masters at the art of living in the moment. And so is Elmo. (It turns out that getting to be three and a half all your life is a pretty good gig!)
As adults, we can’t return to those simple days of childhood, but we can draw on their lessons to recapture some very basic pleasures, like that joyful feeling that the sky’s the limit. If you are a parent, as I am, you’ve witnessed a certain no-holds-barred spirit in your youngster and undoubtedly you’ve looked for ways to nurture that quality, to help your child discover and follow his passions.
That type of nurturing is one of the things that Elmo does best (and my own parents did an excellent job of it, as well), but it doesn’t have to end once a little girl or boy no longer watches Sesame Street. True, sooner or later, he’ll trade up from crayons to computer keyboards, or she’ll exchange imaginary friends for trips to the mall with real friends, but there is a certain magical quality of childhood that can be preserved and used as an inner strength throughout adulthood.
Being Elmo helps me tap in to those lessons of childhood every single day of my adult life, and now I want to share what I’ve learned—about love, joy, creativity, friendship, and so much more—with you. I believe that this little red monster may hold the key to unlocking that most elusive of fairy-tale treasures: a happy life with promise of a happy ending.
WHEN I TELL folks what I do for a living (“What’dya mean you’re Elmo? You’re a forty-five-year-old six-foot African American male with a deep voice, get outta here”), after they regain their composure, they ask me to explain Elmo’s popularity. Elmo is instantly recognizable in nearly every country in the world. He knows heads of state, A-list celebrities, world-class athletes, Oscar winners, Tony winners, Grammy winners, spelling-bee winners, and lots of babies. If Elmo had a cell phone, it would never stop ringing. Why is this little fur-and-foam bundle of energy such a phenomenon?
I have a one-word answer: love. Elmo connects with children and adults on the purest and most fundamental level, and that is the human desire to love and be loved. It’s as simple as that.
Though I’ve said “Elmo loves you” thousands of times, maybe millions, the thrill remains because children crave hearing that they are loved. (So do most adults, even if they won’t admit it.) And kids love to say it back—“I love you, too!”—and you know they mean it, no matter how many times they say it.
“I love you.” Those are magic words—basic, simple, easy to say, but as adults we often forget their power. We often forget to say them. But Elmo reminds me on a daily basis that love is the foundation for a happy life. And before we can love each other, we have to learn to love ourselves.
BACK HOME IN Turner’s Station, a blue-collar community located just east of downtown Baltimore, Maryland, there was plenty of love to go around. In fact, my mom had so much love to give that she shared it with all the neighbor kids, running a family-style daycare center out of our two-bedroom,