Y’know, I’m an idiot.
Okay, in some ways, that’s just a given: most people are. But I’m an idiot because I think I sucked up most of my available brain width between the ages of 3-5 with television. The square-headed, one-eyed sitter was my constant companion as my mother toiled ceaselessly in the kitchen and my two older sisters utterly ignored me. I must have watched hours, and it impacts my life still.
I mean, seriously. Mac asks if I need anything from the store, and I invariably say, “A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.” After the first couple of years we were together, he finally asked why I always said that… and thanks to the magic of Youtube, I could not only explain it, but show him.
But the Sesame Street sinkhole otherwise known as my brain often sneaks up on me. Mac made pie, and though the lemon filling was tasty, the egg content (in the meringue, too) gave me and our guests who’d never had lemon meringue pie (which I thought was a British dessert, but Scotland — is so not part of GB. They pretty much let you know that every day) the shudders. I’ve been plotting to recreate a pie we can all enjoy, and instead of making lemon, use lime… and coconut.
Of course, I had to do a little cha-cha and sing, “you put the lime in the coconut and eat it all up.”
To which Mac said, “What?”
Me: “It’s a song.”
Him: “Is that from Sesame Street again?”
Me: “Um, no…?”
Oh, snap. Yes it is. The HOURS I must have spent when I could have been playing Baby Einstein or taking Suzuki violin lessons and becoming a child prodigy. But no. I was dancing in the living room and learning all the words to The Rainbow Connection by heart.
Guess that’s not a bad trade-off, when it all comes down to it.