The Sesame Street War

"Melmo."

"Zoe."

"MELMO!"

"ZOE!"

"MELMOOOOO!"

"ZOEEEEEEEE!"

Such went the argument a few days ago between my grown, adult friend and my 1 1/2-year-old son.

Some restaurants bring out crayons and a paper placemat for kids to draw on while waiting for the food to arrive. And Biscuit is starting to understand that crayons are cooler if you put them on paper instead of putting them in his mouth. So I thought it would be a good idea to get a couple of coloring books and some crayons to take with us to restaurants.

So my grown, adult friend, Biscuit and I went to The Dollar Store before dinner the other evening. I picked up a couple of Winnie the Pooh coloring books, but my grown, adult friend is a huge fan of Sesame Street characters and insisted we buy their book. We grabbed some cheap-o crayons, and we were ready to go.

When we got to the restaurant, I pulled out the Sesame Street book and the crayons. Biscuit flipped through the coloring book and found a page he wanted to color. He pointed at the character on that page, and that's when the arguing started.

Biscuit pointed to Zoe, who is an orange girl character, and said, "Melmo." I didn't know Biscuit knew any of the Sesame Street characters' names, but then I remembered that he has a counting book, a book about shapes and one about colors that all feature Sesame Street characters.

My grown, adult friend HATES Elmo. She says he's stolen the thunder from all the other characters. So she was quite dismayed when Biscuit mistook Zoe for Elmo.

I tried to argue my son's case. "You realize you're arguing with a 1 1/2-year-old, right?" I asked. "Plus, it's a coloring book," I explained to her. "These are just black-line drawings. If she was colored orange, he wouldn't have called her Melmo."

But my grown, adult friend wasn't buying it. "He has to learn!" she said. "We have to teach him!"

"I'll get right on it," I told her.