It's A Beautiful Day...

Those damned ninjas with their onions!

You know what? I'm not even ashamed to admit it. I'm sitting here reading this article on Buzzfeed about Mr. Rogers, and it has me tearing up a little bit. He had to be the most genuinely nice man on Earth. When I was little, Mr. Rogers was the show I hated to watch, but couldn't turn the channel.

For starters, he talked directly to the camera. That screwed me up as a little kid, because I thought he could see me. I'm not ashamed to admit that I used to talk back to the screen.
"Hi neighbor!"
"Hi Mr. Rogers."
"I hope you're having a good day."
"Not really. My grandmother won't let me go outside, but I...Oh, you're just gonna cut me off. Okay. Well, yeah I guess we can go to the land of make believe, but I'd like to come back to why I'm sad."

He dumbfounded me, because he was so nice...and patient. I wasn't used to adults talking to me like that. When I was in Kindergarten my teacher used to tell us to "Put your head down and be quiet! It's time for y'all to take a nap and I'm trying to watch my stories." Meanwhile I could hear the announcer on the portable TV in her desk drawer, "The Young and the Restless. Sponsored, in part, by Crest!"

I feel bad, because as a kid I didn't really know what to do with that kind of unconditional support and niceness. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like my family was sending me to work in the salt mines or something, but we're talking about an 'up and coming' black family in the 80s. They were grooming me to go out and face crack-era DC. My grandmother is the same one who taught me to brew my own cup of Folgers on the stove in a pot before walking myself to school in the morning. Clearly, "It's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood" was not the mood in my house.

Anyway, I feel bad because after First or Second Grade, Mr Rogers seemed corny to me. Life had taught me that no one talked like him in the real world. It wasn't even safe to go in some of my neighbors' houses, yards or personal space without express permission from my mother or grandmother.

A new guy moved in the neighborhood once and baked everyone a cake and then went door to door introducing himself. It looked so good, and I salivated as my grandmother carried it from the door and straight to the trash can. "You can't trust people." Another neighbor moved in and hoisted me and another kid over his shoulders and into the air so that we could "fly" like Superman. She 'cussed' him out! Then I got an impromptu lecture, "Intro to Pedophilia." I was five.

Whether she was paranoid or not, I'll never know. What I do know is that I spent way too much of my childhood watching the news and reading the paper, and her concerns were definitely grounded in reality. The world was screwed up, and I had to be careful. "People aren't nice without an agenda."

A few years ago I watched either and episode of Biography or E! True Hollywood Story where they basically said that Mr Rogers was the real deal. None of it was an act. It brought everything full circle, and I can't really explain it, but it made me happy and sad at the same time. What does it say about our society that, by seven years old, some of us have already ruled out niceness and decency? It took another twenty years of life experience to realize that it's possible that there really are some decent people in the world. What could we all have become if we could've cut out the middle?

Since I'm being totally honest here, I'll admit that I actually went back and watched a few episodes recently. Over the past few months so many "life events" have occurred. It's the kind of stuff that can seriously cripple one's self esteem and sense of self worth. Mr Rogers looked right through my computer screen and said, "I like you just the way you are. Life is special, because you're in it."

Best neighbor I never had