Because He Loves to Count Things!
Count von Count, or just The Count for brevity’s sake, loves to count things! Just ask any Sesame Street viewer to count to 10 and see if you don’t get the numbers in a strangely Draculinean (is that a word?) accent, punctuated with a clap of thunder!
The Count was introduced in the early 70’s in season 4. He was first introduced to teach numbers and basic mathematical skills, notably counting. In fact, the Count counts obsessively. Voiced by Jerry Nelson, the Count is strangely reminiscent of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula.
As he originally appeared, the Count’s obsessive counting was always followed by maniacal laughter, thunder, and lightning. He had hypnotic powers, and could stun people with a wave of his hand, giving him the ability to count without interruption. In the mid 70’s, his character was softened to make him more friendly, and less frightening, to children. Still counting, even to the annoyance of others, the Count no longer laughed with an evil laugh, changing to a more triumphant chuckle. He lost his hypnotic powers, and became more friendly with other characters, including the human characters.
I suspect that a lot of the Count’s popularity, besides his uniqueness as a character, stems from the accomplishment that children feel when counting. The alphabet is difficult to learn in order, but once mastered leaves no place to go (Except, of course, for learning to rearrange the letters into words and rearrange those words into sentences, and of course learning sounds and meanings. What I mean is strict memorization of the letters. Once you know all of your ABCs, you know them all.). Learning to count is different. Accomplishments are continuous, at least up to a point. How many parents proudly declare “My child can count to 10!” then “My child can count to 20!” and so on. Getting up to 100 is a major accomplishment! Like the Count, children love to count things – to show off this new knowledge. They may not do it as obsessively, but they still like to count.
My fondest memories of the Count from my childhood, though, involve his musical interludes. All of his songs, no matter what style of music, have a Romani style background. His background chorus of bats never ceased to amuse me! My favorite was “The Batty Bat,” a dance number with a wicked beat. I jumped rope to this song!
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Diane began performing as a puppeteer when she was only six years old. Her first marionette, Clippo the Clown, a gift from her Grandmother, accompanied Diane to school every year through college. As an adult, Diane began making and performing hand puppets. She writes the shows, fabricates the puppets and props, performs all of the puppetry, and even serves as her own lighting and sound engineer!
