Randomly assigning articles is oftentimes a fun game we play here at ToughPigs. Sometimes we have so many pieces to publish that we let fate decide which one we’ll write about. So with that in mind, I had been tasked with telling you all about the 13th anniversary special of Sesame Street. But readers, I have come to a stunning conclusion:
There is no 13th season of Sesame Street.
I don’t mean there wasn’t an anniversary special that season. I mean that that season … simply doesn’t exist.
In my deep dive, I’ve discovered that Joan Ganz Cooney suffers from triskaidekaphobia – a fear of the number thirteen. So just like office buildings that skip from 12 to 14, she insisted that Sesame Street not create any new episodes in its 13th year. So for 365 days, every afternoon on PBS in its usual time slot, children were treated to a completely black screen. No songs, no sketches, no explanation – children simply faced the cold, gray images of themselves staring back at them from the screen. And it still had better ratings than The Greatest American Hero – believe it or not!
So since there was no season 13, that means that Richard Hunt and Madeline Kahn never went bird-watching together (which makes sense when you think about it since he’s a brilliant puppeteer and not a stupid, old actor). It means that there’s no crayon factory video to blissfully lull you to a serene state of comfort. There’s no blind Muppet named Aristotle who taught us about Braille. Grover, Cookie Monster, Herry, and Frazzle have never sung about being fuzzy nor blue (nor orange), and Ernie has never danced himself to sleep with a flock of sheep. These things simply never happened and you imagined all of them.
If you do have any memory of these events, please double check your Berenstain Bears books or Kazaam VHS tapes for any further discrepancies. Now I’m off to watch Sex in the City and draw monocles on Rich Uncle Pennybags!
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by Matt Wilkie
