Bert Mondays: Bert's Wild Side

One thing that's lovely about Bert is his passion for things regular folks might consider to be odd. Bert loves pigeons and paperclips and bottlecaps. He also relishes a day sitting in his chair reading boring stories. His favorite meal is oatmeal, adorned, I'm sure, with neither brown sugar or raisins. In short, he is compelled by the plainest of the plain.

This quintessential Bert beigeness is confounded a bit by his fascination with the letter W. The letter W is neither plain nor boring. As one of the pointier letters, like its cousin M, W is not easy to make, and it is often difficult to say. It also beings wonderful non-boring words like walrus, wizard, Walla Walla, and, well, wonderful. In fact, the very nature of the W, with its reckless upside-down-Mness, invokes images of wild abandon. Indeed, you should note that other members of the National Association of W Lovers include the wacky Harvey Kneeslapper and Ernie himself, by no means wallflowers.


You might argue that Bert's love of the letter W is thus out of character for our normally staid and sensible saddle-shoe wearer. I submit, however, that Bert's devotion to W hints at a deeper part of Bert: that driven-to-the-edge Bert who finally loses control after endless minutes of Ernie's pestering and gives in completely to the wacky plan of the moment with even more enthusiasm than Ernie. Yes, Bert has a wild side.