(Page 1 of 3) Mr. Snuffleupugus is God by William HrdinaSUMMARY: A satire.
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A Short Story by William Hrdina
Mr. Snuffleupagus is God.
I don't know why nobody has ever caught on to it before.
It's been there staring us in the face all of this time.
That's right. Mr. Snuffleupagus, the wooly mammoth from Sesame Street.
Is God.
I keep trying to tell people. To explain.
But they won't listen.
Instead I just get strange looks. Like I'm crazy.
I'm not crazy. I just figured out the secret.
I didn't make it up- it was they.
The infamous they.
Listen.
On the surface Sesame Street is this really cool, progressive place. All the races live together; boys and girls are treated equally. The show has even had a gay couple, Burt and Ernie, living together Ricardo-Style (i.e. in different beds) for decades. Sesame Street teaches tolerance, multi-culturalism and provides basic instruction on a variety of topics from manners to counting to particle physics.
But that's just the happy surface world they want you to see. Underneath lies another, darker reality.
The entire Muppet cast is a menagerie of social disorders. There are plenty of good examples to choose from. A mild example is the wacky OCD of the Count, 1, 2, 3, 4, help me I can't stop.
A bit more serious is the cookie grubbing, blissed-out Cookie Monster. His entire existence is concentrated on getting cookies. His intensity for his next cookie fix can only be rivaled by a crack head stranded on a desert island.
Then there's the saccharine sweet Elmo. He reminds me of a fuzzy red Stepford Wife. You just know he's gonna snap and cut Grover's throat with a paring knife one day. I remember one time I had a waitress at a Steak and Shake that acted a bit like Elmo. She was far too happy to take my order. She scared the hell out of me. Thing is, she snapped just like I thought she would. A guy gave her a lousy tip and she went ballistic- knocked him unconscious with a frozen hamburger patty.
Grover's no picnic either. He has a super-hero complex and the hyper-thin physique of a heroin addict. Plus, he's always with the hugging.
Elmo too. Anyone who always wants to hug strangers is weird.
Then there's Big Bird.
He's kind of the head of all the Muppets; if for no other reason than he's got the size to fight all of them at once.
Despite his leadership role, Big Bird may be the most screwed up of all.
At least that's what I thought at first.
That was before I realized the Truth.
Now I'll admit Big Bird is clearly manic depressive. He's always feeling down, needing to be cheered up by the kids for one thing or another. He loses a sock; he's in a funk for the entire presentation of the letter G. Then, Gordon and Susan will find the missing sock stuck on his back and all of a sudden he's manic; singing and dancing on his yellow tree trunk legs.
At first I figured, that's no big deal. Someone just needed to prescribe the bird some Prozac, maybe a Quaalude or two.
He'd be fine.
But it goes a bit further than simple manic depression.
Big Bird also has a bit of Joan of Arc in him.
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