Dear Hipsters,

Dear Hipsters,

After watching Sesame Street this morning, I just had to write to thank you.

I know this comes as a shock, since it seems I may not have always understood you and your habits. For instance, your love of other people's old stuff, which you insist on calling "vintage", and how you can get over the fact that some guy named Sal was sweating in that very same blue mechanic's shirt twenty years ago, is beyond me. Or your fanatical knowledge of music and love of minor chords. Or your insistence that song lyrics have, you know, meaning, when the bar I set for my own music is the kind that involves alcohol and can I dance to it in one.

But one thing we can both agree on is our nostalgia for all things related to our childhoods. Because of your refusal to grow up (and I mean that in the best Peter Pan sense*, since if the gentrification of the once run-down neighborhoods you frequented after college, and the plethora of Bugaboo strollers on said streets, is any indication, you are making some serious pay-pah) and decision of many of you made to channel this eternal youth into the entertainment and toy industries, my children and I are a having a great time together.

If not for you, how else would the Snoopy Snowcone machine be back in production? I get to enjoy the same agonizing process of shaving ice cubes down bit by bit with my kids instead of only telling them about it after refusing to buy a disgusting old one at a garage sale. If I went to garage sales. I don't. But the toys you have resurrected for future generations to enjoy are surely your ticket into heaven.

Getting back to my original reason for writing, if not for you, how else would I be able to enjoy a children's Bob Marley album? Or the likes of Will Arnett and Feist on Sesame Street (I bet The Children's Television Workshop is a virtual mecca for you guys, huh?)? Or Jack Black and Elijah Wood on Yo Gabba Gabba? That show, by the way, might as well be called Hipster Parents, This One's for You! since even its title is an oblique Ramones reference and bands like The Shins are regular guest stars. But despite it's obvious clash (no pun intended) with my, admittedly, uptight sensibilities, I enjoy it because it has humor and intelligence and that is something you guys bring to the table in heaps in this over-incorporated, homogenized world of children's programming.

So thank you, hipsters, for your fine, fine work. You make my days brighter by giving me a laugh as I watch a Liz Lemon (an actual lemon with glasses) count 30 rocks on Sesame Street. I thank you for preventing my brains from literally running out of my ears at the saccharine hands of Barney and his evil minions The Teletubbies. I owe you for all the snide comments I ever made about your bizarre facial hair or lack of personal hygiene.

Sincerely,

Mean Mommy

*And I thank those of who you didn't grown up in the regular non-Peter-Pan way for being there to make my latte every morning.