Counting Love

"They call me the Count.  And do you know why they call me the Count?  Because I love to count things!" - Count von Count, in just about every Sesame Street sketch he's in.

My daughter is in love with a puppet who belongs to the landed gentry in Transylvania.

Her feelings about the Count have surpassed her delight with Elmo (now known in this house as Emmo), in that her Count doll comes with us nearly everywhere, and she demands to see pictures and video of himself on the computer several times a day.

Watching all these clips of the Count has reminded me what a strange bird he is.  If you watch enough Count clips in a row, you realize the muppet is obsessed.  He absolutely must be counting, and if he isn't, he's in the midst of a breakdown, and starts counting intangibles like his feelings.  When he's on vacation, he counts backwards.  He hires a man to dress as a sheep and jump over his bed when his sheep take the night off.  I mean, whoa.  No one on Sesame Street is as monomaniacal as the Count.

He also engages in romantic relationships, which I suppose may give Maeve some hope.  He has courted three Countesses so far, and even proposed to one of them, although it turned out he was mostly in it to count her rejections.  He's dashing in his cape, sash, monocle, and slicked-back hair.  He can even dance pretty well... I guess he's the only real 'catch' on Sesame Street.

I haven't the foggiest idea what draws Maeve to the Count, since she's not all that interested in counting or numbers yet.  It must be something about his look, or the predictability of the sketches he's in... they nearly always end in a lightning clap and an "Ah ah ah".  But whatever the reason, we are knee-deep in the Count at our house these days!

That's one, one obsessed little girl!