My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [28]
In a lot of ways, “Elmo’s World” is very much like the imaginary worlds we all created as kids—whether we were in the driver’s seats of our Hot Wheels cars, shopping with Barbie, or on the way to Pluto in our refrigerator-box spacecraft. Back then, we didn’t hesitate to use our imaginations to go on imaginary trips, to pack up those imaginary suitcases and travel to faraway places that didn’t exist on any map.
Elmo gives us grown-ups the permission kids never need to let our creative juices flow and maybe, just maybe, to reenter the world of make-believe and let some of our dreams come true.
WE HAD JUST left my grandmother’s house in Baltimore City, where the violent riots of 1968, which exploded for several days in April following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were still sending aftershocks throughout the community. The major unrest—the fires, the looting, the street fighting—had come to an end, but the racial tension was still palpable, and even though I was just seven years old, I could sense the anxiety and the changes in the air. And I had seen the pictures in the paper and on the evening news—the screaming crowds, the cops in full riot gear, the armed soldiers standing atop the roof of the Sears building.
Dad drove the car slowly down my grandmother’s street, warily eyeing the groups of whites and blacks who stood on opposite sides of an intersection, with a telltale trail of rocks and broken bottles littering the sidewalks. It had taken us a while to leave my grandmother’s, since we wanted to make sure it was safe to get in the car and drive away without incident. The two groups, mainly young men, had been squabbling all afternoon, occasionally backing up their words by throwing something hard or sharp at the enemy, but when it seemed relatively peaceful, my dad had hustled us out of Grandma Jones’s house and into the car.
We just wanted to get out of there and back to Turner’s Station. And then we heard a loud pop.
“Get down!” Dad hollered, and we instantly made ourselves as small as we could in the backseat, convinced someone was shooting at us.
“What the heck…?” he muttered, looking around frantically. Then he broke into a soft chuckle, and Mom joined in. Slowly we peeked over the seat to see what had happened.
No one had been trying to “get us.” The “shot” we heard was the cork popping off a bottle of Cold Duck champagne, which had been rolling around under the front seat for weeks, maybe months—perhaps an overlooked New Year’s Eve treat or gift that never made it out of the car and into the refrigerator. The bottle of bubbly, which had been shaking and baking in the car, picked that moment to blow its top.
The sound of my parents’ laughter and the scent of spilled champagne reassured us as we rounded the corner, glad to leave the ugliness behind, for now.
IN MY JUNIOR year of high school, I auditioned for the school’s spring musical for the very first time. After years of building my confidence performing as a puppeteer, I wanted to try going out onstage alone. My success as a local entertainer had all but pulled me out of my shell, and by the time I entered high school, I had grown more comfortable in front of other people.
True, there were still times when I wanted to stick my head inside a locker if some of the cool kids approached me, but for the most part I found my niche. I participated regularly in music and drama, had friends from the neighborhood as well as school pals, and so far, life was pretty good at Dundalk High School.
The neighborhood I grew up in was almost exclusively