We’re a generation of grazers. We watch clips of TV shows, download songs instead of albums, and turn the channel even if it’s something we might want to watch. I’ve been in the car with someone who would scan for a new song on the radio after each and every song. Every single long-haired slow jam. It’s like we were putting together a mixed tape on the go. Well, pieces of a mix tape at least. I can’t say we ever listened to a full song. She would scan until she heard something by Poison and then stop and say, “Oh yeah” and then when the song ended, we would begin the adventure again.
Point is, I’m part of an entire generation that can artfully jump from topic to topic. We’re capable of starting a conversation about Tiffany (I Think We’re Alone Now) at 1pm and end up high-fiving girls with dark hair and tattoos at Roller Derby by 6. The more lucid among us will wonder how we got there. The rest of us just think it’s a great night.
A lot of people blame the Internet and modern media for this grazing, this skipping from topic to topic, action to action like a baby playing with the buttons on a tape deck. Maybe it was MTV? Maybe we’re just evolving? The next great leap forward: now you can ride your bike, chew your food, speak French, and rub your belly at the same time. Congratulations. You deserve a medal.
Well, you’ll be glad to know I’ve figured it out. It’s not the Internet or MTV or the alien DNA the visitors snuck into our water supply (though I do think all of those things have added to our new sporadic tendencies).
It’s Sesame Street. Sesame Street is to blame, and here’s how I figured it out:
We we’re having one of our conversation slams late on a Thursday afternoon. These conversations do feel a little competitive, like we’re all one-upping each other in weirdness. With three people, the conversation topics went something like this: burritos -> running -> Hunter S. Thompson (Google) -> Whitesnake (Slacker) -> Peanuts -> dog hair -> US mail -> Simon and Garfunkle -> Google -> Sesame Street -> Oscar -> Mr. Hooper -> death -> produce. This leads me to a Muppet Wiki looking at the episode in question and I discovered something remarkable.
The average number of scenes in a 50 minute episode of Sesame Street was between 35-40. That’s a separate scene about every 80 seconds. And these aren’t scenes that are part of the same narrative. We’re not following Ernie around on the streets and each scene is a new house or doorstep. We go from Big Bird -> The Count -> cat in a dollhouse -> weird pinball machine -> Guy Smiley -> numbers roll call -> the letter H -> the number 4 -> cake -> puppies -> Ernie -> kids on a playground.
Every 80 seconds we get something completely different.
No wonder we’re good at skipping around. Jim Henson did it to us. Snuffy and Maria did it to us. We were conditioned.
So, thank you Sesame Street for teaching me how to count and for ruining my ability to focus on one thing for more than 80 seconds. My life is peppered with oddities because of it.
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