Mr. Rogers

This month’s 404 is about Mr. Rogers.

Lots of posts about him these past few days and lots of comments.

He was there when I was very small.  He was on the black and white television in the kitchen, when I was eating cinnamon toast and breathing in the lead fumes from the beltway.  He is still a voice in my head, a moderate among the monsters.  He is almost always kind.  He never pretended there were good people were mostly perfect and bad people who pretty much sucked.  He knew we all got angry.  We all try, we all fail, we all grow.  Everyone gets angry. In fact, everyone is fucked up sometimes, but that’s all right, we can get better.  Look for the helpers.

Ultimately, it’s Mr. Rogers who made it impossible for me to align with pitchforks and torches.  He’s one of those people who helped me decide that there is no higher calling than putting on some comfortable shoes and a sweater and singing badly to messed-up children.

Yes, I know he came from his own place of privilege and not everyone has a chance to put on slippers.

But, jeez, pointing out Mr. Roger’s slipper privilege is kind of missing the takeaway.  Also, if you have the capacity to deduce it and point it out, you probably have some badass slippers of your own. Metaphorical, expensive, slippers woven from the outrage you are (truthfully) stealing from someone else.  The special slippers you wear for the subtle bullying you do, like the woman in the housecoat who accidentally spilled very hot tea on the children from time to time.

She was not a very nice puppet.

It’s ok, we’re all flawed, usually monstrously so… But you could work on being a better neighbor. 

I should work on it too.  I should work on not being angry on a Friday because someone cleverly pointed out that Fred Rogers was a white man. I should work on being patient and realize not everyone gets that context is sometimes a convoluted thing, made of memory and old scars. Everyone gets angry.  Sometimes things don’t go your way.  Sometimes someone pisses on a kind man’s grave.

I should work on not being angry on a Friday.  My wife is home and she is in a good mood.  People are telling jokes.  People are sharing good music they’ve done.

I should look for the helpers.

Hello Bedford Falls, Merry Christmas!

It’s a Wonderful Life is my favorite movie.  I watch it every year, at least once.  I have absorbed the dialog into my daily life.  I have the poster in my living room.  I have a George Bailey action figure, pristine condition, still in box.

I love the dialog (I have a pet theory that Dorothy Parker wrote many of the better lines).  I like that subtle flaws are woven into each character.  The flaws humanize the characters, but also allow them to fit into both the normal world, and the Ex-George Baily dystopia – it’s kind of genius.  Most of all, I love the message, more so now than ever.

At this middling point in my life, I confront not only my mortality but my mediocrity.  The big plans and possibilities I had when young mostly never happened.  My name on a screen, five feet long and luminous, was usurped by my signature scribbled on sick notes or on mortgage checks.  I wrote no great novels, won no battles, saved no villages, built no empire. 

I am a B+ guitar player who married well and can mix a decent drink. I took time for my children and was lucky with money.  I have failed at plenty and never did all that much to make the newspapers.

My only hope for glory is that the movie suggests, no one is a failure if they have friends.

My moral résumé rests on a theory that I helped more than I hurt.  I have never saved a kid from falling through the ice, or kept old man Gower from prison, but maybe a few people might’ve fallen without me, maybe a few families might not have been families, maybe a few folks lower on the ladder.  

No way to tell for sure, but I hope things were better with me than without me. I hope my life has helped the complex gears of the universe to turn a better way.  I hope in some small way I have been secretly important.

I’m sure lots of us feel the same way.  

So while I don’t know for sure for myself, I know that when I spend time with my closest people, and when I see the names on my feed -- all the people who have fed me, kept me on their couches, gotten me jobs, made music with me, saved me, all the other particulars that made up days both long past and recent – I am very thankful.  I know that my own Bedford Falls is much better for your efforts.

Multiply that by everyone you know, and you can bet you did some good.  “You see George, you really have had a wonderful life.”  It’s worth remembering that The Wonder of the life which Clarence celebrates isn’t the particulars of George’s life, it’s the effect his life had on others.  

So if you’re feeling middling and blue right about now, consider this a Christmas card from your buddy J.  Don’t be hard on yourself.  Think of the ripples you have left, the people you have lifted, the good you have done and hopefully you can hear some hint of a bell ringing.