Three Elmos

When my daughter was barely over a year old, she entered — as many kids her age do — into the Church of Elmo: an act of worship whose potency is made both stronger and more peculiar given that, at the time, she had never actually watched Sesame Street, having merely seen the cast of characters and studied (furiously, as Lucy studies all things) a handful of book covers at my parents' house from when I was a child. This in and of itself is not particularly noteworthy -- Elmo's success was a firestorm-shaped catalyst that consumed Sesame Street. But where things got a little strange was when she learned of Cookie Monster, a creature whom she instantly and persistently renamed Blue Elmo. Lucy is, amongst many other great things, forthright, and so every day for the past nine months, if you utter the phrase "Cookie Monster" in her presence — let alone point to a depiction of him while doing so — she will immediately and forcefully correct you: No. Blue Elmo.1Enough people who read this…