Oh, Mr. Noodle!
- Catherine Addor
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
We were at Sesame Place, sitting in the theater, watching the Mr. Noodle/Elmo show. My daughter was six, shy, soft-cheeked, and uncertain about things that involved bright lights and an audience. When Mr. Noodle scanned the crowd for a helper and pointed at her, she immediately buried her head in my armpit.
He paused. The moment hung there, an invitation slowly slipping away as his hand drifted toward another child. Something in me knew: this was one of those moments. The kind you don’t get back.
I whispered, gently but honestly:
“This is your chance. We’re not coming back anytime soon. If you feel sad later for not doing it, I can’t fix that. You dance now, or you don’t dance; either way, you need to be OK with it.”
She lifted her head.
She stepped forward.
She danced with Mr. Noodle; awkward, joyful, brave in the way only small children can be.
Twenty years later, at age 26, she retold the story. She remembered every detail. Not the theme park, not the show: the lesson. She said she carried those words with her into adulthood:
Sometimes in life, you take the chance. You dance.
I realized that what began as a whisper in a theme park became a compass point in her life.
Moments like this invite us to look inward and consider how often we, too, stand at the edge of an opportunity, deciding whether to step back or step in.
What moments in my own life did I hesitate on, and how might things have changed if I had stepped forward?
When do we mistake protection for permission to hide?
What would it look like to tell ourselves, even now, “Dance now or never”?
In parenting and in education, not all learning happens in classrooms. Some lessons arrive in flashes, in invitations we don’t expect and can’t recreate. Teaching children to recognize a fleeting opportunity, take a negligible risk, and trust themselves may be one of the most excellent life skills we give them.
Sometimes the lesson is for us too: Courage doesn’t always look like confidence. Sometimes it just looks like lifting your head.
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