Verbal Minority

So last week the intwebz and the old fashioned TV was awash with stories about Sesame Street.  Sesame Street is now as old as I am.

Which is pretty amazing for a television show and even more amazing in the competitive and cut throat Children’s Television programming.

I grew up in Scotland, so I mostly watched things like Blue Peter and Doogle the Dog, etc., etc., but I do remember watching Sesame Street.

I remember being quite fascinated by the show.  It was the first one – apart from Starsky and Hutch – that showed a less  pretty America.  The ‘states for us kids in the UK was based totally on movies and television shows.   Sesame Street, showed that – muppets or no – not every one lived in ‘Dallas’ like mansions.

They showed scenes of kids playing on rough urban streets.  They showed kids who didn’t appear to be screamingly wealthy either.  They showed American kids of all stripes and colours having fun and doing what kids do no matter where they are from or what sort of income level their parents have.

I found this amazing.

I found this comforting when I found myself living in a ‘rough urban’ neighbourhood.

A show that had kids that weren’t all pretty and English was also HUGELY exciting for me.

See, you might find this funny, but Scottish people and the Scottish accent just wasn’t really heard on television before the late 70’s unless it was the drunk or heavy character on the show.

And books, well kids books.   Every book I read all the WONDERFUL adventures happened to ENGLISH children.  English children with plummy accents who were sent to the country to stay with rich aunts or attended boarding schools and rode ponies on the weekends.

No books about Scottish kids living in council housing finding other worlds in the back of their wardrobes.

I remember this because when we played..we played at being something other than Scottish.

Sesame Street was a street filled with accents.

It was my introduction to the concept of ‘multiculturalism.’  Which is ironic in that the show was made in the ‘melting pot.’

But the Scotland I grew up in was very monochrome.  Very white.  The distinctions were not of colour or ethnicity..but of religion and class.

Class was still a big issue in the UK then.  I don’t know what it is like now.   Scottish people didn’t really fit into the English class system…way down there.  Scotland had it’s own class system and what SORT of accent you had …what region you were from…would make all the difference in where you could ‘aspire’ to ending up.

And there was Sesame Street.  Teaching me my ABC’s and Spanish too.  And teaching me that no matter what you looked like or what you sounded like.    That you were a person who counted.   Who was on a level playing field with every other muppet out there.