dianaschnuth

All it took was a tweet from Talcott: “How wrong is it that I find the analog signoff montage from the PBS station I grew up with kinda touching? http://tinyurl.com/putgp6”

And, damn it all, that got me YouTube surfing. That’s never a good thing. Well, it is, but not if there’s anything else you want to get done. I’ve been surfing YouTube for an hour now.

First, it was analog sign-offs. I was looking for nostalgic or classy ones, but found a lot of Action News-style ones that ended with, “push the button, Fred—”

Then, I started looking for my favorite version of the PBS ident montage.

(The one at 0:35 is the one I remember from my childhood.)

From there, of course, I moved on to Sesame Street clips, discovering by reading comments along the way that I was not, in fact, the only kid to be scared by the “funky chimes” ending credits.

Then I found this one, with Olivia and Linda (although I usually think of Bob and Linda doing this one — they were a couple, after all). I’d be willing to bet that my Mom still knows all the signs to “Sing.”

I also had never heard Luis sing it en Español while playing the guitar.

Aaron thinks it’s bizarre that I remember so much music from kids’ shows. I could still sing you any regular Mr. Rogers song, or most of the standard Sesame Street songs (late ’70s to early ’80s, and some mid-’80s when my cousin Michael watched).

Watching all these old clips makes me kind of misty. I hate to think I’m nostalgic for the days of half-day Kindergarten, when I’d come home and have a lunch of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and a naked hot dog, and lay on the floor in front of the tiny color TV in the living room to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers (and The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact). Age five or six is an odd age to be nostalgic for, don’t you think?