I Broke Up with Big Bird...

...but he started it.

So I guess it all began several years ago. We met in college. I noticed him immediately sitting in the front of our Culture of Theater class. I soon realized that he always sat in the front, and everyone else soon learned not to sit behind him unless they wanted to sleep.

He was somewhat distracting. In a Logic I class, the professor actually asked him to sit along one wall or the other so he would be out of the direct line of vision. Not even for the students' sake. The professor would often turn around and stop speaking mid-sentence, intensely distracted by the volcano of feathers in front of him. After that, Big Bird tried to sit along the walls or in the back. He even started showing up late so that he could sneak in "without being observed."

He was a very talented performer - had a high, clear voice and a slow rhythm of speech and movement. Despite his size, children found him comforting to be around. He made most of his spending money doing little odds and ends jobs like kids' birthday parties and touring around the local middle schools doing remakes of Grimm's fairy tales. I traveled with him for one show. He was a consummate professional. Always focused, always ready. I'd never met anyone so devoted to their craft. Maybe that's what attracted me. I figured someone that responsible and focused would be a great person to end up with. Little did I know he felt the same about me.

One day during our junior year he showed up at my door to ask me out. I accepted gladly and we went out for dinner and a movie. He slouched as far down in the seat as he could till his knees were up above his shoulders. We stayed in the theater long after the movie was over just talking. Every time I said something he would giggle and say, "Sarah, you're the best!" He always said it just like he meant it.

Then I didn't hear from him for a year. I graduated college, traveled to Europe, fell in love, fell out again, came home. Met up with Big Bird. We had lunch. He told me the exciting news that he had been hired by Sesame Street to tour as ... you guessed it, Big Bird. It was a good fit, really. It made a lot of sense. He would be traveling for a year or so all over the country. We went out again that weekend. He introduced me to his family. And then he left. He sent postcards. I sent letters. But we really didn't say anything. Empty words.

When he came back, he looked me up, again. He took me out, again. We had a lovely time, again. As we said goodbye he promised to call me so we could see each other again before he left. And then he gave me a hug. He really does give the best hugs: big and warm and strong. You just have to remember to breathe through your nose so you don't get feathers in your mouth.

He never called. Not even when I called him and left a message inviting him out. Nothing. No response. So, I assumed he left town and toured the other part of the country or the world or whatever it was he was supposed to be doing just then. He never wrote, he never called. He ceased to exist. My heart was broken.

Now really, one of the cruelest ways you can inform a girl you are not interested in her is to promise to call her and then distinctly fail to do so. I know this from my experience of being the girl. but I took it on the chin and decided to accept the facts and move on. I wrote him off, feathers and all, and went on about my way.

Then suddenly, I'm back on his email list. Not just the mass group list, but also the family list, in an email where he tells everyone he'll be back in town and hopes to see them and all those bright, happy Christmas type things that birds are so good at writing. I decide to shrug it off and look at it as a joke of the universe. Then I get the christmas card, with it's generic greetings and Big Bird's beaky smile. That, too, I ignore, determined to maintain my calm demeanor in the face of his insistent denial of what had actually happened.

But the text message he sent Christmas Eve was the last straw. (I don't even know how he can touch the right buttons. He uses his wing tips. It's clumsy.) "Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Missing you and loving you." Bull sh*t. I hatched brave plans to call and confront him. But hating confrontation almost as much as he does (you see, very few people know this, but Big Bird is actually chicken), I texted back the following message: "After being so roundly dissed by you last summer, Big Bird, I think I would prefer not to hear from you. I'm starting to feel like your favorite chew toy."

It made me kind of sad to say that. It sounds so harsh and I know he doesn't like being a bad guy. He perceives himself as being a great guy and works very hard to make sure other people think so too. But I'm done being his occasional fascination.

The feather-brained idiot.