Sesame Street raised me to be the proper citizen that I am now. My childhood is filled with memories of hours spent in front of the television learning how to count to twelve and reciting my ABCs then laughing cynically at the end; which I did not refrain from doing until I was eleven years old and only because my mother deemed it inappropriate. Looking back, I can clearly see how and why I turned out the way that I did. The story plots, the lessons of the day, the characters in the show all contributed to broadening my sense of understanding and quest for eternal learning.

At age seven, not only raised by the muppets but also tabloid magazines, I read my horoscope in two languages daily and kept up with celebrity gossip religiously. My fifteen-year old cousin would bring home stacks of year-old tabloids and we would go through it together. Since we w

ere in the Philippines, the people and the issues discussed were relatively alien to us. It was a perfect opportunity to practice reading English and observing American culture from an American point-of-view. Since real contemporary people wrote the articles, I believed every single one of them as the honest truth. Concurrently, I also read the Book of Genesis in the Bible. I perceived it as a lovely work of fiction, even if I attended a Catholic School run by nuns.

I met Harry Potter in the summer of 2001 while visiting the Welsh countryside. He was already popular when I got to know him. The film version of the book was already in post-production and slated for a November 2001 release. One morning, after I finished milking cows and herding sheep, I stopped by a local bookstore to pick up something else apart from livestock to keep me occupied. My (real human) best friend had been encouraging me to give Harry a try and that morning, I succumbed. I did not leave the house for three days after that initial meeting, except to purchase the remaining installations of the series and milk more cows. In those days I spent cooped up inside a cozy Welsh cottage, my love for beautiful stories was again ignited. I

Some common words found in the essay are:
Sesame Street, Harry Potter, Philippines Canada, Morning Tagalog, Lamb I'm, Grouch Grover, Margaret Atwood, Genesis Bible, Catholic School, , harry potter, met harry potter, met harry,
Approximate Word count = 818
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)