The Illumination of The Grouch From Sesame Street

The illumination of the grouch from Sesame Street

Snuffleupagus was walking through the park singing to himself. Today was a big day. Big Bird had told him he was getting all of his friends together so that they could finally meet Snuffleupagus. They had tried before, of course, but something always happened. Someone was late. Snuffleupagus had to leave. Big Bird would turn around and suddenly no one could see him. But today was supposed to be the day, and Snuffleupagus was happy about it.

Then a trash can moved.

The Grouch lifted himself slowly to the top of it. He was throwing garbage out onto the street so he could make more room inside his trash can. This was apparently something the Grouch did. He saw Snuffleupagus walking by and looked at him.

“What are you doing here?”

Snuffleupagus stopped.

“Big Bird needs me. He’s going to introduce me to his friends.”

The Grouch looked around for a moment.

“Hm. I hate Big Bird.”

Snuffleupagus almost jumped.

“WHAT? How can you hate Big Bird? He’s a big yellow bird!”

“Uh-huh,” said the Grouch. “So he needs you, is that right?”

“Yes. He needs me. He’s going to introduce me to his friends.”

The Grouch stared at him.

“Big Bird doesn’t need anybody. Big Bird manipulates everybody into doing what he wants them to do.”

“Manipulates? No he doesn’t.”

“Well look at you. Here you are because Big Bird needs you to meet his friends.”

Snuffleupagus thought about it.

The Grouch leaned a little farther out of his trash can.

“No, Snuffleupagus. You need him. He doesn’t need you.”

Snuffleupagus went quiet.

“You see, Big Bird hurts a lot.”

“Hurts a lot?”

Now Snuffleupagus was starting to feel bad for his friend.

“Yes. And look at you. You’re hurting right now.”

Snuffleupagus lowered his head.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Right. This is what Big Bird does to people.”

The Grouch waited a moment and then said the thing that hurt most.

“You’re imaginary, Snuffleupagus.”

Snuffleupagus looked at him.

“Big Bird says I’m not imaginary.”

“See? He hurts you by saying that. So just go home, Snuffleupagus. Nobody will notice because you’re not really here anyway. Nobody will see you hurting, and then you won’t be hurt.”

Snuffleupagus felt awful.

And Snuffleupagus walked away.

A few minutes later Big Bird came running around the corner with practically everybody on Sesame Street behind him.

“Hey, everybody! He’s right over here!”

They followed Big Bird into the park.

“Come on, Big Bird. How many times are you going to get us together to meet Snuffleupagus?”

“This is the day!” Big Bird said. “I know it is! He is the caringest, smartest, biggest person I know, and he’s right—”

Big Bird stopped.

“Snuffleupagus?”

Everyone looked around.

“Snuffleupagus?”

Nothing.

Big Bird walked farther into the park.

“Snuffleupagus, where are you?”

Someone sighed.

“Oh, Big Bird. He’s just imaginary.”

“No he isn’t! He was right here!”

“Look, Big Bird, I have to go back to work.”

“Yeah, Big Bird, we have to go back to school. Enough of your adventures.”

One by one they left.

Big Bird stayed there a moment longer, looking around.

“Snuffleupagus? Snuffleupagus? He was right here.”

Then Big Bird walked away.

And there was a trash can sitting right in the middle of everything.

And nobody noticed.

Meredith watching this gets very angry.

Very angry.

And she steps directly into Sesame Street.

“HEY!”

She points straight at the trash can.

“HEY, MR. GROUCH! I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE! YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME!”

She walks straight up to the trash can and begins banging on the lid.

“I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, MR. GROUCH! YOU BETTER COME OUT!”

The Grouch slowly begins to rise.

But something is different now.

He is still the Grouch. Still green. Still furry. Still a puppet. But awareness begins coming into him. Light strikes his face, and for the first time he looks confused not because something annoying has happened, but because something has happened that he cannot understand.

“What is this? What’s going on?”

Meredith looks directly at him.

“Grouch, you are living in your own illusion.”

The Grouch stares.

“You decided to lie inside your illusion, and that is why you lie to everybody else. You need to get out.”

He doesn’t know what she means.

But Meredith knows.

“I look at you, Grouch, and I can see the life you lived. You used to be a trash collector, and somewhere you decided you couldn’t escape being a trash collector, and that made you grouchy. But all you ever had to do was put the trash can down.”

The Grouch looks at the can beneath him.

“And now you lie in the trash can. You actually live in it. Somehow that trash can became your whole world, and then your whole world ended up here on Sesame Street. But you have to go, Grouch. People put trash into trash cans so somebody can take the trash away. You live inside the trash and then throw the trash back onto the street so everybody else has to pick it up again.”

Meredith points at him.

“That doesn’t work anymore.”

The Grouch has nothing to say.

“You say the illusion is your home. It isn’t, Grouch. It isn’t. And because you’re lying inside the illusion, you lie to everybody around you. You hurt people and frighten people and tell them they are imaginary when they are not imaginary.”

Now something terrible and beautiful is happening to the Grouch.

He is having a serious moment.

A being of light is looking at him, and somewhere inside himself he is beginning to realize that he is a character. A puppet. A Grouch who lives in a trash can on Sesame Street.

And this is who he has been.

The Grouch looks at Meredith.

“Where are you from?”

Meredith points.

“From over there.”

She looks around Sesame Street.

“I like Sesame Street, Grouch. I like what they talk about here. Neighborly values. Work. How to get along when people are weak and sad, and how to get along when they are happy and strong.”

Then she looks at him again.

“And I don’t like you.”

The Grouch leans backward.

“I’m from over there, Grouch, and I am very, very, very, very angry with you.”

And Meredith starts kicking his trash can.

The Grouch loses his balance.

For the first time his little trash-can world is actually moving beneath him.

“STOP! STOP!”

The Grouch is approaching something like total consciousness now.

“But this is impossible! I thought—”

“YES, GROUCH! YOU LIVE ON SESAME STREET!”

And suddenly, as if things could possibly become worse for the Grouch on Sesame Street, another being arrives.

Like a parent.

“Meredith. Meredith. What have I told you about doing this?”

“MAMA! THE GROUCH MAKES ME ANGRY!”

Meredith points furiously at him.

“That was Snuffleupagus! The caringest, smartest, biggest person Big Bird knows!”

She kicks the garbage can again.

“HE HAS TO KNOW YOU CAN’T LIE TO PEOPLE! GROUCH, YOU CAN’T LIE! GO AWAY!”

“Meredith, you are not allowed to do this.”

“No, Mama! HE isn’t allowed to do this! I won’t let him!”

She kicks the garbage can again, and now the Grouch is truly frightened.

Eventually Meredith is taken away.

But the other being remains.

Above him.

Looking down.

The little puppet is entering full consciousness.

The Grouch looks upward and sees only something burning and vibrating above him. His eyes cannot truly behold it. He doesn’t even understand what it is that he is seeing. The Grouch frightened hides in the garbage can. And the being looks down at the little Grouch for a moment as though even it does not know exactly what to say.

Finally it speaks.

“Mr. Grouch, you can come out. Do not be afraid. I am not going to harm you.”

The Grouch slowly rises from the garbage can.

He is trembling.

“Do not be afraid.”

The Grouch keeps looking upward.

“You understand now about children.”

The Grouch waits.

“Children are the ones always watching.”

The Grouch looks up at this impossible thing above him, terrified and innocent at the same time.

“Yes.”

The being begins to move away.

Then it stops and looks back.

“Mr. Grouch, you will forget about this. Time moves on for all of us. Nobody will understand that this happened, and everything will become the same again.”

And then it is gone.

The Grouch, having touched illumination, looks around Sesame Street.

For one moment he really sees it.

He sees the buildings. He sees the people moving through the street. He sees the sunlight touching everything. He looks upward and sees the sky for what it actually is.

He sees that there is a world outside of the trash can.

And for just a moment the Grouch knows exactly what has happened to him.

Then slowly, very slowly, he lowers himself back into the garbage can.

And decides to stay there for as long as he can.

There are beings like this in our reality. And sometimes the children of these beings become upset by what they are seeing, and sometimes something like this happens.

But to those above us I would only say this:

These children of ours do sometimes put us in the most curious situations, don’t they?