He was at least seven feet tall, and as wide as the doorway. He could have been a dominant center in the NBA. His arms were thick and meaty, unlike his flimsy fabric arms on television. And, instead of the shabby triangle of a body I had imagined as a child, his torso and midsection resembled a giant, tight egg. Cookie Monster was truly a monster.

Yet his face, which was the size of a station wagon tire, was so innocent and confused. He couldn’t seem to focus.

I still wasn’t sure if he could see me at the table. I felt a strange emotion that is really hard to describe. A pang of fearful excitement rushed through my body from my solar plexus to the front of my face, and I almost fainted.

That’s when he saw me. His body sort of oriented itself to me, even as his eyes still goggled out of control. He jumped back a step, and the floor shook between us.

“You Hart?” He said, pointing one huge finger in my direction.

I would have fled if I hadn’t been absolutely frozen to my seat. This was too much to handle. Catching my wife cheating on me with this impossible fantasy character. Maybe I had finally lost it and popped that screw my mom always said I was bound to pop. This wasn’t real.

“Yes, I’m Hart,” I said. “And you are the Cookie Monster.”

“How did you know? Was it me. . .grumbly voice? Was it me. . . Crazy eyes?”

I took a breath for the first time in what seemed like minutes. He was intimidating, yet dumb and discombobulated, like he was constantly reorienting himself to his surroundings. My fear slipped away a little.

“I think it was the blue body hair,” I joked nervously, finding the torn avocado on the kitchen table and fiddling with it. “What was going on with you and Jenna in there?”

“Oh! Me sorry! Me sooooo sorry!” He held his palms up in the air in a defensive gesture. I noticed that he was only a few feet away from me now, his huge blue feet covering acres of cream-colored tile. “Cookie Monster blush, me so embarrassed! Should me go now? Me not try to break up marriage!”

“I think you already did.”

He crashed down into the other worn kitchen chair and put his head between his hands. “Oh no, no, no!” He lamented.

I once again thought to myself that I had to be dreaming.

He began sobbing. I was absolutely at a loss trying to figure out what to say or do as his bawling continued on for minutes. Finally, his googly eyes emerged from the tips of his enormous fingers and he began to speak, quietly, “Me have things that me cannot do without. Me cannot live for one day without a cookie. Hopefully more than one cookie. Lots of cookies. But me cannot live without other things as well, things that they not let me talk about on the TV. Me cannot live without cigarettes. Do you have any cigarettes?”

“I don’t smoke.”