For Mr. Rogers

Sometimes two ideas come together that you wouldn't think to put there. I would have never put bacon and chocolate together, but they have it at the new candy store downtown. Or lawn care and snacks, but there was a company that did both that my dad used for a while. Two ideas came together for me this week and I'll stick it out there and see what you think.

First, yesterday was Mr. Rogers' birthday. He's dead so you don't need to get him anything, but Mr. Rogers gave a lot of his time to me so I thought I could give some to him and his legacy. Sweet, slow, predictable Fred Rogers was just about the kindest man a lot of children encountered. Mr. Rogers loved you before you were cool. He wrote those songs, you know, that he sang like, "It's You I Like" (not the color of your hair, it's you I like, not the fancy clothes you wear...) and those sweaters, the zip up ones, were his Christmas gifts from his mom. I always got the creepy molester vibe from the Speedy Delivery mailman, Mr. McFeely, but it turns out that McFeely is Fred Rogers' middle name (his mom's maiden name) so the name was just an unfortunate coincidence.

I was watching some footage of Mr. Rogers on youtube yesterday and there's one that makes me smile of him learning to break dance with his young friend Jermaine. Mr. Rogers, with his dorky Keds and his sweater is just all eager and smiles and the child was at ease and confident in his presence. It made me wonder how me made so many young people love him.

And here's where idea number two came to mind: Recently I heard an addiction specialist say that it helps to look for the similarities rather than the differences in the recovery community (because, as she said, it's the same elevator, just pick which floor you want to get off). In other words, learn from anyone who can help you, even if they are not just like you. No, I'm not in recovery, but I'm guilty of resisting connection with others by highlighting how different I am from them. Hell, it's the whole point of this blog, right? I'm even better at avoiding connection with folks I dislike. If I dropped the rope in the tug of war I invent in my head, I wonder if I'd find acceptance and relief? I wonder if that's how Mr. Rogers seemed to move so peacefully between worlds of difference. I mean, Mr. Rogers and break dancing? Could anything seem less likely? But there it was on PBS and it went pretty well.

So it's not the beginning of a bad joke when I say that Mr. Rogers and that AA advice have a lot in common. I think part of the charm of Fred Rogers is that he always found the similarities between himself and you or whomever he was introducing that day. "You like to dance? I like to dance. Can you teach me? You like music? I like music. Show me how to make those sounds. Sometimes I feel sad or angry. Do you?" He was living the idea of finding the similarities and building from there. For him, there was no tug of war.

See? Nap time, vanilla wafer, sllooooowwwww, Fred McFeely Rogers, was on to something. He told me every day he liked me and that I was worth his time. He told me that we were a lot alike. He showed me how to try new things and laugh at being silly. He kept things tidy and always remembered to feed those fish. The puppets kinda bored me, but he was a truly lovely human. Oh, happy birthday Mr. Rogers. You loved me before I was cool.