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(Page 2 of 3) Mr. Snuffleupugus is God by William Hrdina He regularly sees and interacts with a an imaginary wooly mammoth that isn't there. Joan of Arc preferred to call her invisible friend by the name God. Big Bird calls him Mr. Snuffleupagus.
When Big Bird points Snuffy out everyone constantly tells him, "No, Big Bird, there is no Mr. Snuffleupagus standing there. I don't know what you are talking about."
But Big Bird doesn't believe them. He sees.
Like a madman.
Or a prophet.
Nobody can actually see the enigmatic Mr. Snuffleupagus except for Big Bird. Nevertheless, he talks to Big Bird and gives him advice and generally acts as his friend. Snuffy always looks out for what Big Bird needs and gives him advice. You could argue he is a perfectly loving being.
Except he's not there.
Now I don't know what kind of people you hang out with. But my friends know enough to have conversations with imaginary people outside of my presence. They know me well enough to know I prefer it that way.
Big Bird isn't satisfied with just quietly believing in his imaginary friend.
He's a missionary.
A zealot.
He wants everyone else to see Mr. Snuffleupagus too. It pains him that people don't believe. He yearns for them to be able to see and curses himself for not being able to manifest the wooly mammoth to them.
Big Bird hasn't yet started going door to door, trying to convert people to Snuffleism, but it may just be a matter of time.
Because Sesame Street is a politically correct, non-judgmental place, some of the time people go along with Big Bird and pretend they can see Mr. Snuffleupagus too. Then, they talk to him facing the wrong direction or something and Bird gets mad at them for deceiving him.
For a while I thought the show was trying to send a sub-textual variation on Nietzsche's message that "God is Dead."
My thinking went as follows:
Mr. Snuffleupagus is a wooly mammoth.
Wooly mammoths are extinct.
If Snuffleupagus is like God, and God is a wooly mammoth, and therefore extinct, we should pay him no mind for he is dead and gone.
But then, a wrench fell into my ideas.
The structure of my faith in the world shattered and so I had to be reborn, rising into the light of the Snuffleupagus.
I realized we, the members of the audience, were capable of seeing Mr. Snuffleupagus. Just because the people within the world of Sesame Street couldn't see him didn't mean the viewers couldn‘t.
Which meant we were just like Big Bird.
This opened up a whole new line of theory for me.
Is it possible, I wondered, if the people on Sesame Street could see Mr. Snuffleapagus. They pretended they couldn't see because they were trying to drive Big Bird mad.
To what end? The people on the show seemed very nice. There was no reason for them to maliciously trick him.
I rejected this idea.
Then I realized there was another possibility.
I postulated the show was telling me God was real even if some people couldn't see him.
That sounded plausible, but I was a bit disappointed to come to such a mundane, pedestrian conclusion.
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