Vintage Kermit

“When did our bookshelf become all Rainbow Connection?”

She looked up from her copy of Dave Egger’s You Shall Know Our Velocity and shifted her weight in her favorite reading spot, the moon chair they’d bought at Urban a few years before.

“I found it in my parents’ attic! Can you believe it? Really brings me back.”

He picked up the vintage Kermit and made it wave at her. She smiled.

Kermit’s hand got stuck on his sweater and he had to pull it off. “What the…he has Velcro on his hands!”

“And feet!” she added. “Neat huh? He used to hang from my doorknob as a kid. He guarded it so monsters wouldn’t get me.”

He laughed and started propping the doll on the shelf with his back blocking her view.

“Don’t make him do anything perverted!”

After a quick dirty look, he went back to work. “Come on, I have the utmost respect for Muppets.”

She relaxed a bit in the chair. “You don’t understand, Kermit was my favorite. My dad gave him to me before he…left. I cried more tears into that toy than anything else I own. My dad used to sing Muppet songs to me. The show theme song or Mahna-Mahna when I was down, Rainbow Connection before bed.”

He turned and joined her in the chair for a hug.

“Thanks.”

“Check him out!” he said with a huge smile, clearly proud of himself.

She looked over to see Kermit sitting with his legs crossed and his hands folded on his lap.

“I love it.”