My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [3]
I undoubtedly inherited my “crafty” instincts from my parents, Gladys and George Clash. Mom sewed like a pro, and Dad loved to draw and make things, and they often got into the spirit of creating with us kids. Once, after a huge snowstorm, my parents helped us construct a massive snow fort—a squared-off igloo. Mom made a flag for us to fly using iron-on letters on red cloth. Though the snow melted, the name we gave to our winter playhouse stuck, and the red flag found a place in our living room. From that point forward my house was known as Fort McKids.
Between neighborhood children, my many relatives who lived nearby, the daycare kids and their parents constantly dropping by, our home life was structured mayhem. And as on Sesame Street, humor was a mainstay. I’m grateful for having grown up in what was basically “kid central,” because it later made being on the set of Sesame Street feel like I was back with my family. With that many kids around, you can be sure that on any given day, the house was populated by at least one grouch and several monsters, and a cookie was certainly something to be devoured, not savored or shared.
Though our house was modest, my sense of home felt larger than our four walls. It extended into the multitude of other homes in which I felt welcome. As a kid, I loved the Sesame Street song, “People in Your Neighborhood,” because it perfectly captured the connectedness I felt in mine. The homes of our neighbors, Mr. Bernard and his wife, Miss Rose, and Mr. Melvin and Miss Lee, as well as Miss Ada, Miss Marie, and Miss Eunice, were nearly as familiar as my own. I can still taste the crabs my father’s friend Kakie (never Mr. Kakie, always just Kakie) shared with us.
No matter how much activity was going on in the house, I always carved out time to watch Sesame Street and other children’s shows. My mother never used television as an electronic babysitter, but I’m like so many of my generation with a fierce devotion to the medium that came into our homes on a small screen and somehow enlarged our world beyond all measure.
Sesame Street first aired when I was ten years old, and as soon as I heard the sprightly opening bars of the theme song, I was entranced. I was one of those up-close sitters. I’d park myself a few inches from the RCA color television set we had. I was so close, I could feel the static electricity of the screen tugging at the peach fuzz on my face and smell the wonderful aroma of electrically heated dust coming from the vents of that lustrous wooden console. No matter how many times my mother yelled, “Kevin! Move back before you go blind!” I’d still feel myself powerfully drawn into that world, and the worn-out seats of my Lee jeans bore witness to the pull I was powerless to resist.
I was instantly taken with this new show, with these creatures called “Muppets”—Jim Henson’s trademark way of combining “marionette” and “puppet”—and little did I know that I was already setting the course of my life to exchange my New Pittsburgh Avenue address for 123 Sesame Street. Love makes you do crazy things sometimes.
HE MAY NOT look like it, but that Elmo’s a love machine.
When parents tell me, “My child lives for Elmo,” I tell them that Elmo lives because of their child’s love for him. I don’t just mean that Elmo is alive in their child’s imagination, though that is certainly a part of it. That child and Elmo aren’t just experiencing love; they’re creating more of it to go around, and in doing so they make the world a better place.
It works like this: Elmo feeds off the love he receives from kids, from the adult characters on the show, and from his fellow Muppets. He doesn’t just take that love in as a fuel and use it up. Instead, he drinks it in and gives it right back in spades. He’s