Weird, Creepy Elmo

Weird, creepy Elmo is how my students described him. I don’t blame them. His big plastic eyes had detached from one side of his head so they were lopsided. He is also worn very thin in places because he was very loved when I was a kid. I had placed him on a shelf in my classroom because I wanted him to inspire the students to write about things that were meaningful to them, even if it is a stuffed replica of a Sesame Street character that has seen better days.

They always made jokes about how he was the stuff of nightmares. Again, I get it. He’s a product of toy makers in the 80s. His mouth is stuck open wide and he just doesn’t look friendly. But when I was in the 2nd grade, I got him from my oldest sister. I use the word “got” where she would use the word “stole”. Same thing. I just remember that she had come to visit, as my sisters did throughout my childhood because they are my half sisters and lived with their dad in a different state. She brought him when she came to visit and I made sure she didn’t leave with him. Whatever method I used to get him, I kept that red muppet on my bed with me every night until I went to college. He was the first thing I reached for in the middle of the night when a thunderstorm would come up because nighttime storms terrified me for some reason. Making sure I had Elmo in my grasp somehow made them less scary.

There’s a picture of me in an old family album somewhere of me on my first trip on an airplane. There he is in my lap. I was carrying him when they took me to the cockpit to meet the pilots. I remember one of them commenting on him and telling the stewardess that he needed his own pair of wings like they had given me. I don’t have those wings anymore, but I still have him. He sits on a bookshelf in my office/craft room. A higher up shelf I might add, away from the reach of a dog that likes to steal things off the shelves when she feels she’s being ignored. There would be no forgiveness if Elmo ended up in her clutches. Though I’m sure my students would cheer his demise because this object of my youth that I cherished for so many years, to them, is just weird and creepy.