Mr. Rogers Taught Us That We Are Special
Mr. Rogers, in ways like this, taught everyone that they were capable of being loved and capable of loving, and taught everyone that they were special, and to this day, his legacy still does.
"Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is let people know they are loved and capable of loving," Fred Rogers once said.
The above quote comes from a book titled You Are Special: Neighborly Wit And Wisdom From Mister Rogers. The most riveting article I read about Mr. Rogers was written by Tom Junod in a November 1998 issue of Esquire detailed his impact on the world through his daily routine. The article starts with a reference to Mr. Rogers's personal stuffed animal, "Old Rabbit," a stuffed animal that Mr. Rogers loved because "he just did, and the night he threw it out the car window was the night he learned to pray." Mr. Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, prayed "when fear and desperation drove him to it, and the night he threw Old Rabbit into the darkness was the night that set the pattern, the night that set him how." Although the prayer didn't bring Old Rabbit back, it was a "kind of endless frantic summoning" that required a great deal of effort.
One of the most famous quotes that Mr. Rogers told adults was that "you were a child once, too," speaking to doctors and particularly ophthalmologists who had trouble comforting and calming children who came into their offices.
Mr. Rogers had gone swimming nearly every morning of his life, and at seventy years old, standing in a locker room, he spoke to Junod in "the sly voice that sounds adult to the ears of children and childish to the ears of adults," and tells Junod that he has gotten a better glimpse of Rogers and his daily routine that Rogers himself has. The first time the two men met, "he told me a story of how deeply his simple gestures had been felt and received," referring to Mr. Rogers's signature gestures of taking off his jacket, putting on a sweater, taking on his shoes and putting on a pair of sneakers.
One time, Mr. Rogers went to visit Koko, the Gorilla who knew American Sign Language, and learned that Koko watched Television. In particular, Koko watched Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, his shower. Koko hugged Mr. Rogers and as if he was a child and took off his shoes.
An interesting tidbit: "Koko weighted 280 pounds, and Mister Rogers weighed 143. Koko weighed 280 pounds because she is a gorilla, and Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds...because once upon a time, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds," and for every day of his life, in the 31 years since the article was originally written, Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds, refusing to do anything that would make his weight change. He maintained his diet and swam to maintain the exact same weight. The number became a gift "a destiny fulfilled" to Mr. Rogers: "the number 143 means 'I love you,'" he said. "It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.' One hundred and forty-three. 'I love you.' Isn't that wonderful?"
Every day, Mr. Rogers took a nap in the afternoon. Every day, he woke up at 5:30 a.m. to read and study and pray for people who requested his prayers, as an ordained Presbyterian minister. When Tom Junod first went to visit Mr. Rogers, Junod noticed this about Rogers and his character: "there was an energy to him...a fearlessness, an unashamed insistence on intimacy, though I tried to ask him questions about himself, he always turned the questions back on me."
Mr. Rogers asked Junod if he had any special friends, like a toy, puppet, or stuffed animal when he grew up. Junod admitted that he had a stuffed animal named "Old Rabbit," a stuffed animal rabbit, but before he could tell the story and finish it, Mr. Rogers took out a small black camera and said to Junod this:
"Can I take your picture, Tom? I'd like to take your picture. I like to take pictures of all my new friends, so that I can show them to Joanne." Then, Mr. Rogers disappeared.
Junod then tells the story of a 14-year-old kid with cerebral palsy, who Mr. Rogers had an exceptionally strong relationship with. The kid had every reason to be bitter with the world: "some of the people entrusted to take care of him took advantage of him instead and did things to him that made him think that he was a very bad little boy." The kid would often get so mad at himself that he'd punch himself in the face and tell his mother, on a computer he used to communicate, that "he didn't want to live anymore, for he was sure that God didn't like what was inside him any more than he did." But he loved Mr. Rogers and his show, and his mother thought that "Mister Rogers was keeping her son alive."
They lived in California, her son really wanted to meet Mr. Rogers. But the mother knew that he was too disabled to go to Pittsburgh, and she thought he could never meet his hero. One day, however, Mr. Rogers was coming to California for a foundation designed to help disabled children, and the kid's mother learned he was coming to meet her son.
Naturally, the son got anxious, and "so nervous...[that] he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him." Despite Mr. Rogers being there to witness the kid's tantrum, he didn't leave. "He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody." Mr. Rogers waited for the boy to come back, and then he made a request to the boy and asked if he could have something from him. The boy said yes through his computer, telling him "he would do anything for Mister Rogers, then said, "I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?"
The boy was in awe, "thunderstruck," meaning he completely wasn't able to talk because what happened was sudden and miraculous. "The boy was thunderstruck because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for." The boy didn't know how to pray for Mr. Rogers, and simply said he'd try. The effects were miraculous: "ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean God likes him, too."
Although Junod looks at the story as if Mr. Rogers was some sort of hero, Mr. Rogers doesn't see it the same way. Junod told him that he was so smart to ask the boy to pray for him, and Mr. Rogers, perplexed, said: "Oh, heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession."
Once, Mr. Rogers went to New York in 1997, shortly after a school shooting in West Paducah, Kentucky that killed three children and wounded five more, to film a week of the Neighborhood to the theme "Little and Big." "He wanted to tell children that what starts out little can sometimes become big, and so that could devote themselves to little dreams without feeling bad about them." When Mr. Rogers first got out of his car on 34th Street, someone shouted upon seeing him, "holy shit! It's Mister Fucking Rogers," and at that moment he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. As a New Yorker, I know that in New York, "it's not an insult to be called Mister Fucking Anything. In fact, it's an honorific...and the moment Mister Rogers got out of the car, people wouldn't stay the fuck away from him, they respected him so much." People told Mr. Rogers heartfelt sentiments like this:
"Oh, Mister Rogers, thank you for my childhood."
"Oh, Mister Rogers, you're the father I never had."
"Oh, Mister Rogers, would you please just hug me?"
His producer, Margy Whitmer, tried to keep people away from him, and eventually, she just couldn't stop. What people don't understand about Mr. Rogers is that he's greedy for this -- greedy for the grace that people offer him." And the next couple lines are what Mr. Rogers says as an ordained Presbyterian minister: "What is grace? He doesn't even know. He can't define it...all he knows is that he gets it from God, through man."
The next place Junod and Mr. Rogers encounter each other is Penn Station, and Mr. Rogers is looking immediately for Junod. With him is a little girl who is holding a blue stuffed bunny, reminding Junod of Old Rabbit, his old stuffed animal, and friend. Except this bunny isn't Old Rabbit, the girl names it "Bunny Wunny." After this exchange, Mr. Rogers goes to an escalator, reaches the street, and looks right at the lens of a camera, and tells it "let's go back to my place," speaking of the Neighborhood. And all Fred Rogers does is walk around New York City, telling us that the whole city, the whole world, is his neighborhood.
Junod's article is long and somewhat exhausting to read through, but nonetheless rewarding to read through, and nonetheless rewarding to even write about. If I could write to Mr. Rogers today, I would ask him to pray for me, and maybe he would write me back asking me to pray for him and thanking me for the grace I showed. I have been in a dark place of despair, and it baffles me like a man like Mr. Rogers once existed.
He once met a boy carrying a sword on his show, a boy who didn't know who Mr. Rogers was. He was a boy who didn't care about who Mr. Rogers was. But Mr. Rogers knelt down and said to the kid: "Oh, my, that's a big sword you have." The boy didn't say anything and his mother nudged him to say, "oh honey, c'mon, that's Mister Rogers." The mother having watched Mr. Rogers as a kid and the son not having watched him, she valued his presence much more than he did. She apologized that his son was probably just tired.
But Mr. Rogers fixed his eyes on the little boy until the boy reciprocated and said, "it's not a sword; it's a death ray." And the mother asked the boy if he wanted to give Mr. Rogers a hug, and the boy said no. Finally, Mr. Rogers knelt down and whispered something in the boy's ear, something that "made the little boy look at Mister Rogers in a new way, with the eyes of a child at last, and nod his head yes." Junod asked Mr. Rogers, at a later point, what he said, and he noted that when a child carries a macho item like a sword, it's to show people they're strong on the outside. Mr. Rogers told him that he was strong, and also told him, "do you know that you're strong on the inside, too?'"
My generation didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers, but what we do remember is the video of him fighting to defend PBS and its budget to the U.S. Senate in 1969. Mr. Rogers told Senator Pastore, the senator trying to cut PBS's budget, that the funding was necessary because the "good feeling of control which I feel that children need to know is there," suggesting that how Mr. Rogers treated kids made them feel like they were in control and made them feel like they could do anything. Whether these kids were disabled, blind, or afflicted in any other way, Mr. Rogers and his manner of treating them led them to believe in themselves in a way they hadn't before.
But what people fail to realize that Mr. Rogers, too, was once a child. One time, he went to the graveyard where his grandfather, grandmother, uncles, and aunts were buried, and he visits graveyards often because Mr. Rogers "loves graveyards," and told Junod this, without any shame or embarrassment: "And now if you don't mind...I have to find a place to relieve myself."
When he was younger, Mr. Rogers wanted to go to heaven, but Fred Rogers, once old and conversing with Junod, came to a realization. "This man...didn't want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world." He came to a certain realization, one he shared with Junod.
"The connections we make in the course of a life—maybe that's what heaven is, Tom. We make so many connections here on earth. Look at us—I've just met you, but I'm investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can't help it."
When Junod went to visit Mr. Rogers the next afternoon in Pittsburgh, he encountered Mr. Rogers and a woman named Deb, a minister at his church. Deb spent a lot of time ministering to the sick and dying, and "out of nowhere, [Mr. Rogers] smiled and put his hand over hers, and [asked]: "will you be with me when I die?" She said yes, and then he complimented her on how great of a prayer she was, and asked her for a favor: "Would you lead us? Would you lead us in prayer?"
Deb, although reluctant, was persuaded by Mr. Rogers. Deb prayed for the grace of God, and although Junod can't recall what was said, he does recall that "my heart felt like a spike and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella. I had never prayed like that before, ever." He realized, then, that this was the moment Mr. Rogers was leading him to this entire time, from answering the thed door of his apartment in his bathrobe and also about when he asked Junod about Old Rabbit.
"Once upon a time, you see, I lost something, and prayed to get it back, but when I lost it the second time, I didn't, and now this was it, the missing word, the unuttered promise, the prayer I'd been waiting to say a very long time."
Mr. Rogers, in ways like this, taught everyone that they were capable of being loved and capable of loving, and taught everyone that they were special, and to this day, his legacy still does.
