Oscar sat in his trash can, the only home he had ever known, but his mind was far from Sesame Street. It was back in the jungles of Vietnam, back at Khe Sanh, where the air was thick with smoke and the cries of the wounded never stopped echoing in his head.
He had enlisted young, believing he was fighting for something bigger than himself. But what he saw in the war changed him. He had lost friends. He had lost parts of himself. And when he returned, Veterans Affairs had nothing left to give him but miracle drugs. They were called miracle drugs because it’s a miracle if you survive.
The nightmares never stopped. The ground in front of Hooper’s Store would turn into a battlefield at night. The garbage truck rumbling down Sesame Street sounded just like a helicopter, the rotor blades slicing through the air as they rushed a wounded soldier to safety—only some never made it.
Big Bird tried to cheer him up, but how could he explain war to someone so innocent? Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, even Elmo—they all meant well, but they could never understand. How could they?
So he stayed in his trash can. It was safer there. It kept the world out. The only problem was, it kept the war in.
One day, a new face appeared on Sesame Street. A young vet, barely in his thirties, fresh from another war, another place, another time. He recognized that haunted look in Oscar’s eyes.
“You served?” the man asked.
Oscar didn’t answer right away. He just grumbled, like he always did. But then, for the first time in years, he muttered, “Yeah.”
The man nodded. “I get it.”
And for the first time in a long time, Oscar didn’t feel so alone.
