A Simple Framework I Didn’t Learn in School
I’d been watching Sesame Street with my five-month-old for months before it finally landed. Not as a revelation or some poetic moment — but as a blunt, humbling realization.
Elmo, constantly speaking in the third person, had it more figured out than I did.
The show repeats the same simple framework over and over, meant for kids who are still negotiating gravity and object permanence: I wonder. What if. Let’s try. No drama. No ego. No obsession with being right the first time. Just curiosity, followed by action, followed by adjustment.
That’s when it got uncomfortable. Because that was exactly how I’d been inching my way through the riddle of my symptoms. Not with confidence or expertise or a master plan — but by wondering, testing, revising. No need to complicate things. Keep it Barney-simple. I fell apart along the way — more than once — and I’m still figuring parts of it out. That, at least, I can now accept with a little more stoicism.
I struggled in school until about seventh grade, when I realized intelligence isn’t the thing that gets you through uncertainty. Curiosity helps. So does a general acceptance of emotional blunt-force trauma, sometimes disguised as grit.
Most days, Benito is strapped to my chest in the Tactical Baby Gear carrier while we watch. He’s calm, observant, just along for the ride. The patch stitched below his tiny chest reads: Say hello to my little friend. It’s funny. It’s absurd. It’s also truer than I expected.
Because somewhere between Elmo’s third-person wisdom and a baby breathing against my ribs, I realized I’d been overcomplicating survival. Wonder instead of panic. What if instead of denial. Let’s try instead of popping ninja smoke and disappearing.
I’m grateful I get to sit with that lesson long enough for it to sink in. Not because it’s profound — but because it’s simple. And because sometimes humility doesn’t come from books, doctors, or hard-earned credentials. Sometimes it shows up in a red puppet who already knows he doesn’t know everything — and keeps going anyway.
Remaining curious.
