;) lovin’ it.The original hipster. Cardigan? Check. Sweet pants? Check. Chuck Taylor knock-offs? Check.
He just showered too much, damnit.
There are those days when cynicism clouds the sidelong gaze. The days which I look back on childhood, the childhood endemic to a certain America, and see a lot of cheap plastic, shoddy production values, and dime-card sentiment all hustled to turn a buck.
Then I remember Fred Rogers.
There are so many stories. The limo driver Mister Rogers insisted be invited into a television network executive’s home for dinner when he discovered the driver would have to wait in his car outside. The boy with autism whose first words came after seeing Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The Stanford educated gorilla Koko who didn’t miss an episode and, upon meeting Mister Rogers in person, embraced him before proceeding to remove his shoes.
Then, of course, there is the fact Mister Rogers saved PBS. The Nixon administration (can there be a better villain?) wanted to slash the funding for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Fred Rogers, at the time a lightly known children’s television host syndicated in a few markets throughout the country, testified before a congressional committee with a straightforward and simply-worded plea:
I’m very much concerned, as I know you are, about what’s being delivered to our children in this country. And I’ve worked in the field of child development for six years now, trying to understand the inner needs of children. We deal with such things as the inner drama of childhood. We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut or the feelings about brothers and sisters and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations and we speak to it constructively.
…
We made a hundred programs for EEN, the Eastern Educational Network, and then when the money ran out people from Boston and Pittsburgh and Chicago all came to the fore and said we’ve got have more of this neighborhood expression of care.
And this, this is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying that you’ve made this day a special day by just you’re being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.
And I feel that if we in Public Television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.
The outcome? Congress doubled funding for PBS.
My favorite story, though, is the one about the Impala. Fred Rogers drove a rusty old Impala, never bothering to trade it in for a newer shinier version, a new shinier toy. One day, after the taping of his show, he found his old Impala gone from the parking lot. He filed a police report. It made local news.
Less than two days later, the Impala was returned to the exact spot from which it was stolen. Everything the same, except for a note attached: “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”
Here this hopelessly corny man, a lithe little man who wore sweaters that his mother knitted for him every day on television, could move the conscious of even the most hardened.
My first memories of Mister Rogers are of his hopeless corniness. For various reasons, I don’t remember the early years of my life, those tender ages which Mister Rogers so directly and deftly nutured from behind the warm glow of a glass screen. I remember squirming through the show, being downright bored with much of it.
I remember wondering why I bothered to watch the show at all. Mister Rogers looked like he stepped out of another time. The music was sweet but annoyingly so. The lessons of each episode I felt like I already knew.
But I continued to watch. I returned to the Neighborhood every day probably a little longer than was appropriate for my age. I returned for that message of care which I so desperately needed. I returned for that assurance, for that positive affirmation, that was so hard to come by elsewhere. I returned for the calm comfort offered amid the turbulent and dramatic world childhood can so often be.
I don’t know how well I’ve absorbed all the lessons of Mister Rogers. I would probably fight someone if they spoke a cross word of old Fred Rogers. I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of that. I curse and drink and stay up late. My intentions haven’t always matched my actions, sometimes much too much so. I’ve hurt others and haven’t always known how to apologize.
Still I know if Fred Rogers were around he’d likely be more than a little forgiving of falling short the saintly line Mister Rogers sketched. He’d probably say the same thing he always did when people were trying to coax a judgment out of him to suit whatever ends: “God loves you just the way you are.”
