Kids' Reactions To Henson's Death Show The Continuity Of Life

Kids don't let you get away with preconceived ideas. Last week, I thought I had an angle figured out on Jim Henson's death.

I don't mean to be disrespectful of the man who gave us Big Bird, and Bert and Ernie, and Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. He was a genius who created wonderful characters. They were funny without being cheap or mean. They taught us lessons without lecturing.

It's just the nature of the business I'm in. Someone famous dies and your instinct is to try to figure out an angle on how to write about it.

So I started talking to kids about Jim Henson. In the stories I had read about him, there had been plenty of quotes from adults. But I hadn't heard from the kids, and, after all, it was for the kids that ``Sesame Street'' was created.

What I had seen were various celebrities comparing Henson to another genius, Walt Disney. They talked about how Henson's characters had become part of our modern lore. They talked about how nobody could replace him.

And there were also the disconcerting stories about what would happen to Jim Henson's worldwide entertainment empire.

His funeral hadn't even taken place. But already there were reports speculating about what would happen to the sale of a large chunk of Henson's organization to the Walt Disney Co. That was a story angle, too. In this age of instant communication, there is no such concept as an appropriate waiting time.

It would have been hard for kids to miss hearing about Henson's death. In the average family, the TV is on seven hours a day. All the newscasts had poignant remembrances. Somewhere in those seven hours there'd have been at least a top-of-the-hour news summary.

These were 6-, 7-, 8-year-olds I talked to. They had grown up with all the Jim Henson characters.

I'll tell you what kinds of quotes I was prepared to write down: The kinds of emotional observations only a child could say.

But what they actually said was, ``It's too bad.'' ``Oh.'' ``What's pneumonia?'' ``Did he have a wife?'' ``Are there a lot of sad people 'cause he died?''

I tried again. The kids said, ``Why are you asking so much stuff about him?''

Again, I don't want to be disrespectful to the memory of Jim Henson. But I think that, of all people, he'd understand.

I contacted a number of day-care centers.

I asked Concordia Lutheran Childcare and Preschool if the kids had mentioned at all that the inventor of ``Sesame Street'' had died. None had.

I asked ABC Child Care. None had.

I asked Kids Country Day Care. A staffer said, ``I think the teachers were upset, but we didn't hear anything from the kids.''

For sure, I thought there might have some discussion at the Big Bird Day Care.

``I haven't heard any kids say anything at all,'' Liliana Solis, the owner, said. ``But then, you don't hear them talk much about the Muppets. It's Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.''

It wasn't a matter of the children bottling up their emotions. Last year, when the children at that center saw a sick, old dog outside, there was plenty of discussion about dying.

I just think that, often, we try to force our preconceived ideas on kids. Adults might try to be accommodating in such a situation. Kids don't know that's what they're supposed to do.

After my attempts to interview the children, I remembered seeing some TV shows in which kids are prodded. The adult interviewer ends up talking two minutes for every five-second reply from the child.

The kids I talked to felt sorry that Jim Henson died, and they weren't trying to be flippant.

But I think what they were saying, in how much they were not saying, was this simple notion: Life goes on.

We adults sometimes forget that. I don't mean about an event such as the death of Jim Henson, but in events in our personal lives that we dwell on.

Life does go on, and sometimes you need a kid to remind you.

Erik Lacitis' column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Scene section of The Times.