Thank You Letter to Mister Rogers
Hey Mister Rogers. Some people are saying some crazy things about you. But I just wanted to say thanks for being there for me when I was a kid. You were on TV in an era that wasn’t the best time to be a kid. Everyone was pretty upset in the 70’s with Vietnam, Nixon, the oil crisis, and the equality movement. Also, a lot of people were high. In fact the drug culture was so pervasive that it put a layer of darkness on everything.
I was a latchkey kid. With a key on a string around my neck I walked home from school at 3pm. I made myself a bologna sandwich and watched TV until my Mom came home. Your show was so soothing and filled with love. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters so I was pretty lonely sometimes. I would turn that crazy UHF knob, you know the one that you can just keep spinning forever, on my 13″ black and white TV that sat on an old milk crate in my room. PBS had no commercials or interruptions so it was just you and me. I needed that attention—even if it wasn’t real.
Your show was like a session of hypnosis. You would start the same way every time. A simple song as the jacket goes in the closet and the sneakers get laced up. You would throw the sneaker from one hand to the other a lot like a watch swinging back and forth on a golden chain. The pre-talk of hypnotism always starts out telling you that it’ll be okay, you’ll still be in control after you let go. “Won’t you be my neighbor?” is that same type of thing. It’s a question and as the viewer you have a choice. You asked me if I wanted to participate and with my free will I made the decision to go on the journey to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. But first, we feed the fish!
Next we went to the picture on the wall and you showed me a movie of how crayons were made. I didn’t know how much work it was to do the simplest thing back then. The short films were fun to watch but they also gave me a little perspective life.
The only way to get to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe is by taking the trolly. Down the rabbit hole we go. Deeper and deeper. Now we’re really in deep. We’re down so deep that it’s all about talking puppets and their little lessons in life. No kid wants to be told what to do by an adult. But a puppet, that’s totally different. Mister Rogers, you got me with the puppets man. Good one dude.
After dropping a few suggestions you slowly reversed the show and brought me back to real life. The jacket came back out of the closet as your signature red Cardigan took it’s place back on the hanger. The entire beginning of the show reversed as if you were counting for ten down to one. Awake!
Adults could and will never understand what you did. You spoke to me and other children in a way that only we could appreciate. When I pass on I hope to be your Neighbor because you Mister Rogers, you were special.