Mister Rogers is Out to Get Me...

I never got to meet Fred Rogers in person, but I'm pretty sure he's trying to make me apologize to the conservative people who populated my childhood and who surround me where I live now in rural(ish) North Carolina. 

So here is my apology:

• I've been a little afraid of you. 
• I've been angry at the things you've said.
• I've been angry at the things that have happened with your support and approval.
• And I have allowed that fear and anger to overwhelm my thoughts of you. To become "The Main Thing I Think When I Think About You."

I am so sorry. I love you.

I was twenty-two and a half years old when Fred Rogers died. 

When I heard the news, I didn't think too much about it. After all, I grew up in the Amazon Basin of Peru, where episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood were in short supply. 

So why am I now, at age forty-five and a half, sitting here with my eyeballs hurting from crying so much as I watched the sorta/kinda biopic of Mister Rogers, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood?

I've been watching a LOT of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood with my kids these past few years, so perhaps that was why it hit me so hard. They're three and six and seventeen, and all of us—even the seventeen year old—have been delighted to be in the presence of such a kind, thoughtful, gentle, and creative man. So maybe that's why my first thought was that Tom Hanks (beloved and talented though he may be) was pretty egregiously miscast—that he's just too famously "himself" to be able to disappear into the character... the man.

I think I was mistaken in that, as well. So Tom, you have my apologies. 

Apologies everywhere!

Because what Hanks captured so absolutely perfectly was Mister Rogers' way of really seeing the people he was with. Not for the clothes they wear or the way they do their hair or the bat-excrement-crazy things they'd sometimes say in the inhuman space of social media. 

He saw them and he liked them, just for being themselves. 

And he was gentle with them.

I cried a lot as I watched this movie, but I cried the hardest in the scene where Mister Rogers asked the protagonist, Lloyd, if he'd be willing to do a little exercise with him where he took a moment of silence to think of all the people who'd loved him into being. Mister Rogers' had been reminding Lloyd that his father—the man who'd most earned his anger—was also responsible for the person who Lloyd had become. 

Lloyd resisted. 

I resisted. 

It was a movie, after all. Just because the people in the restaurant where Lloyd and Mister Rogers were sitting had gotten quiet and the whole movie had stopped, well, that didn't mean I needed to just—

But I did need to. 

So I did.

I closed my eyes and thought about all the imperfect, infuriating people who'd so imperfectly loved me into being and I sobbed some chest-wracking sobs.  

The movie went on, my tears subsided, and a little while later I heard the crunch of tires on the gravel outside my little home office. I paused the movie and went outside. 

I saw her... 

One of the conservative people I'd grown up with. 

A kind, vulnerable woman who I'd run into recently and chatted with and—if I'm being completely honest—hadn't felt completely comfortable talking to. What did I have to say to her... a woman I'd known over twenty-five years ago? After all, there are only so many ways to say, "Remember when?"

She had a large, crinkly-looking plastic bag in her hands.

 As she walked over to me, I wondered: Why is she here? What does she want? 

She held the bag up in front of her. It had a fabric-y looking brown blob inside. 

"This was Danny Fast's poncho," she said, and she handed it to me. 

I instantly blubbered. 

Danny Fast was one of the people who had Loved me Into Being. He was important. And although I've written about Danny a fair bit, the most recently time was almost six years ago, when I'd penned a sort of a eulogy for him after his untimely death of an unknown illness. 

Danny had been a hero of mine in my childhood... an older guy who'd taken a real interest in me and taught me a lot. A genuine Jungle Boy who'd grown into a Jungle Poet and Philosopher, living and working with the Achuar people in the deep deep Amazon. Also he'd been on television, as a guide to some National Geographic investigative reporters. To my younger self, he was magic.

I'd appreciate it if you'd bookmark that link and go read about him sometime, because he was an exceptional person who deserves to be remembered well. But my point here is to talk about Mister Rogers (who would have loved Danny!) and how he reminded me that nobody—not even the most (to my way of thinking) ill-informed boor bloviating on the internet—is only that boorishness. 

Every single one of us is so much more.

We are beautiful.

We are absolute miracles. 

So I'm sorry, old friends, for reducing you in my mind.

I will probably keep disagreeing with you, often vehemently. And I will definitely keep writing, and keep making art that irritates you. Some of you will "unfollow" me for that, and may even "unfriend" me. I want you to know before you go, though, that I am trying hard to see you.

That I love you.

That I am grateful for who you are—for your many kindnesses and generosities.

And I am going to make a request: that you go spend some time with Mister Rogers by watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which you can find on Hulu or Disney Plus, or Youtube Premium, or Goodle Play, or-or-or...

• or you could go read the lovely real-life story it's based on, an Esquire magazine cover story by Tom Junod;
• or you could watch the currently-on-Netflix documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, which is just as beautiful and challenging;
• or you could watch any of the Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episodes that are currently available for free online; 
• or, if that's all too much of an ask, just watch Mister Rogers' six-minute address to Congress.

Please. 

Because as I look around at the tire fire these ostensibly United States are becoming, one thing that seems clear is that we need to set down our phones and try something different. We need to practice unrelenting kindness and compassion... especially in the direction of the people we've become convinced are irredeemable. 

To do this, we desperately need exemplars and heroes. 

Not loud, self-righteous ones endlessly flashing their ostentatious capes; but rather kind, slow-paced, gentle, quiet ones who speak always in the still, small voice of love.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood insists that Mister Rogers is as human as the rest of us—that he worked hard to be the way he was, projecting palpable love to everyone he'd meet.

I'm grateful for that example.

I'm grateful to Mister Rogers for reaching out to the man who wrote the article... that became the screenplay... that became the movie... that gave me the reminder I needed to hear.