Was Guy Smiley really that happy?

I loved Sesame Street whenever I was a little girl. Each afternoon at my grandmother's house, my routine consisted of the following: lunch, nap, General Hospital, Sesame Street, and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Some of you are hoping that I'm kidding when I make mention of watching General Hospital at the ripe old age of 3 or 4, but I would not kid about matters involving Blackie, Robert Scorpio, Frisco Jones, or Edward Quartermaine. Friday's were extra special because I went to the beauty shop with Mu so she could get her hair done for church on Sunday. Jesus does love a sassy 'do. I inevitably scored a 5-piece pack of Carefree sugarless gum from Esther Forrester every week which made the trip completely worth it. Back to my point, if I ever had one of significance in the first place.

My love for Sesame Street. To say that I was obsessed is a bit of an understatement. Back then, I looked forward to 4:00 as much as I look forward to meal times now. Even though I'm not really sure why because Oscar the Grouch completely got on my nerves and I was terrified of the Count. Look, I know that they are Muppets, but Count had a scary laugh and each time he laughed, it was accompanied by sounds of thunder in the background. Don't even get me started on my fear of thunderstorms. I feared them almost as much as I feared my mama's hair in this picture:
(It's unfortunate that my dear mom was jealous of her 2 year old's naturally curly locks so she went and stuck her finger in an electric socket but that's another story for another day.)

So. Back to Sesame Street. My favorite parts of the show were the ones where they went to places to show how things were done. Like the one that shows how milk is made. Or the one with that teaches about recycling aluminum. The one that I loved the most was the one where they showed how crayons were made. We were talking about it at work yesterday so this morning I got the bright idea of seeing if it was on YouTube. Lo and behold, it is.


Funny how my memory of the way super cool video from my 4 year-old perspective is much different than it is now. I mean, was the crayon factory next to a retirement community? Given all the rust on that machinery, I do hope those employees had an updated tetanus shot. At least the folks seemed happy to be at work. Or maybe Guy Smiley just shared his SSRIs with them.