Sesame Street

This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the name your price tool. It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. It's the late afternoon on a Monday. I'm four years old, sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor of my parents' apartment. The carpet is shaggy, ugly and brown. I have a cherubic face and bull haircut, you know, like the one Jim Carrey has in the film Dumb and Dumber. In front of me is a TV with an antenna and dial. It's the late 1980s. And on the screen is my daily companion, Sesame Street. Today is a very special day because today's the day when my little sister, Alice, meets my best friend, Bird. Ah, bird. My family had only recently moved to The US from Iran, and I was lonely. I couldn't speak English. I couldn't make sense of where we were or what had brought us here. In that moment where I needed a lifeline, Sesame Street, with its weird cast of characters, was there the giant animals, monsters, Muppets, the kind adults and children everywhere on the street. It's a puppy. Oh, Annie. You're right, Bert. Oh, look at him. Isn't he cute? I learned English watching Sesame Street. I learned how to deal with loss, anger, sadness, loneliness. When my parents, who were dealing with their own trauma and working constantly to make rent, weren't there, I learned from Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Susan and Gordon. It was a window into a whole new world, a safe, accepting, beautiful American world. I wake up in my house. It's called the The name's Kermit. Whatever you say, Frankie. It is you. Just open my mouth and What? This is amazing. But I wasn't alone. In millions of other homes, millions of other young children like me were sitting in front of their TVs watching the same show I was. And some of those children grew up to work right here on THROUGHLINE. I watched Sesame Street in the early nineties when I was a kid. From the early nineteen seventies. So right, you know, right when Sesame Street started. I always joke that it was created just for me because it was made about a year after I was born. My sister and I actually weren't allowed to watch a lot of TV, but Sesame Street was one of the very few shows that we were allowed to watch. I would watch from the couch of my family's apartment in The Bronx. I was in Wichita, Kansas. On the floor in our living room, way too close to the TV. And actually, my earliest memory of Sesame Street is actually my earliest memory. I think it made me feel like I I could be on the show. Like, I could could be on Sesame Street. Only child, being raised …