Can you tell me how to get to Beekman Street? ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

Usually, this weekly feature resurrects a much-loved 'Sesame Street' sketch of old, but this week I'm doing something a little bit diff.

This installment highlights what I call the 'Sesame Street' Taboo. When I was about 10, I got to the age at which 'Sesame Street' was considered more of a target for crude humor than anything. I wrote entire storylines in which the whole cast of lovable Muppet characters was killed off by ridiculous means.

In fact, this brand of humor became so pervasive that my parents forbade any mention of the children's TV show at all. Yes, that was an Allowed Cloud.

This taboo didn't stifle my jokes and stories. We were traveling on eastbound Interstate 74 in Cincinnati several years later and saw a sign for Beekman Street. The name evoked the image of an anthropomorphic bird, so I leaned into the front seat, moved my hand like a beak and - in my best Big Bird voice - declared, "Beekman Street!"

Almost every mention of Beekman Street ever since has been delivered in this manner. That's because it's funny.

And it's funny because it's exactly what everyone else is thinking but doesn't dare to say.

I'm going on 36, and I still do it!

On Monday, the Peace Bike toured Cincinnati again (during the same trip in which I defied the latest Allowed Cloud on the Purple People Bridge), and I did it again:



I did this in public, no less!

The America I want to live in is one where people do Big Bird impressions in public. That'll make the country strong again!