i have a to do list. it isn’t very long. please don’t call it a bucket list.
here it is:
1) see david letterman live (i crossed that off on a train trip around the US in my mid-twenties)
2) see the northern lights (this is really because of a charles kuralt story)
3) visit every state in the US during my forties
4) get a master’s degree (4 weeks down)
5) re-learn how to swim (last week i did a lap with only a kickboard)
6) drive cross-country
7) have a pet cow named henrietta
this week i crossed another one off that has been so deeply a part of me that i realized that it existed in the same moment that i realized i could cross it off.
8) live on sesame street
“i can see my apartment from here.”
i grew up in the suburbs outside of los angeles in the second half of the seventies. and i ate sesame street up. loved it.
but i wasn’t sesame street’s target audience. it was developed to enrich the lives of new york city kids – to give them experiences outside the city that they might not get otherwise. it had the opposite effect on me. i loved the idea of stoops, a grocery store down the street, people out walking. after i moved to corvallis, i bought a house with a big yard, in a part of town where not many people are out walking. it was a great house for me and my foster daughter, but i fantasized about living downtown. so when the opportunity presented itself about a year and a half ago, i was ready.
here’s how i connected the dots. last week, i stopped to talk to RJ, a guy who’s often out playing his harmonica down my street, to thank him for saying something to me a few weeks back about how well i’m walking without a cane. i had just gotten big waves from the guys who work at the hot dog shop. then this happened:
on my walk home from campus that afternoon, i started thinking about that “these are the people in my neighborhood” song. and then i realized that i’ve always wanted to live on sesame street and i do now.
when bert and ernie’s lease is up, have them come talk to me.
chicanes 