Too use words he would probably ask me not to use, Mr. Roger's and people like him are f***ing AWESOME.
A Friend in the Neighborhood
By DAVY ROTHBART
ANN ARBOR, Mich. When I was 3 years old and my older brother was 6, he wrote a letter to Mr. Rogers. Thrillingly, Mr. Rogers wrote back. They began a little correspondence, and the next summer, when my brother told Mr. Rogers that our family was headed to Massachusetts for a week's vacation, Mr. Rogers invited all of us to chill with him for a day at his summer home on Nantucket.
We had a glorious time. Mr. Rogers sang songs to us, played with us in the sand and told us stories about our friends from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. It was a day I have never stopped glowing about.
Twenty years later, in 2001, I went to see Mr. Rogers again. I was working on a story about neighbors fighting, and it felt appropriate to ask for insights from my all-time favorite neighbor. My idea was to play tapes for Mr. Rogers of people in my neighborhood in Chicago and see if I could get him to mediate some real-life disputes.
I was skeptical that it would work out. It's one thing to know how to change your shoes and feed the goldfish; it's something else to deal with, say, the tensions and complexities of gentrification. We met at the TV studio in Pittsburgh where Mr. Rogers filmed his shows. He welcomed me beaming, a spry and slender old man.
"Last time I saw you, you could pick me up in your arms," I said. "I doubt you could do that now."
"Well hey, we could try!" he said, laughing.
We talked for hours. He was kid-like and curious, an utterly engaged listener, more interested in the details of my life than in talking about his own. He broke out hand puppets � King Friday, Daniel Striped Tiger, X the Owl. It was both eerie and dazzling to see him carry on conversations with them, slipping effortlessly among their voices and his own.
I told him about my upstairs neighbor, who hated my loud music and always banged on her floor with a broom to get me to turn it down. Mr. Rogers said, "I will always uphold a person's right to silence." He said he'd been staying at a motel recently and the traffic outside his window was so loud that he'd gathered some pillows and slept in the closet.
"That's what I should suggest to my neighbor," I said.
Mr. Rogers laughed. But then he suggested I talk to the woman upstairs. "It's so easy to condemn when we don't know," he said. If he had a dispute like that with his neighbor, he said, "I would hope I would be brave enough to visit."
In my neighborhood, I told Mr. Rogers, everyone seemed to fear each other. The people moving in feared the people already there, and vice versa, and everyone feared the teenagers who cruised up and down the boulevard. We listened to some of the tapes I'd brought. "The worst thing is, people seem afraid to talk to each other," I said. I wanted to know why.
Mr. Rogers sat quietly for 15 full seconds. "Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us." His eyes seemed to be watering.
When the interview was over Mr. Rogers gave me a ride back to my hotel. We got in his car and edged out of the parking lot. The road was packed with rush-hour traffic. Mr. Rogers tapped on his left blinker and we sat there for a few minutes, waiting for a chance to pull out.
"It's always hard to turn left out of here," he said, though he showed no signs of impatience.
I wondered if Mr. Rogers, who died yesterday, was one of those unflappable saint-like types. I asked him: Don't you ever just get frustrated?
He smiled. "Sure. Sometimes. Sometimes I do. Don't you?"
Davy Rothbart, publisher of Found magazine, is a contributor to the radio program "This American Life."
A Friend in the Neighborhood
By DAVY ROTHBART
ANN ARBOR, Mich. When I was 3 years old and my older brother was 6, he wrote a letter to Mr. Rogers. Thrillingly, Mr. Rogers wrote back. They began a little correspondence, and the next summer, when my brother told Mr. Rogers that our family was headed to Massachusetts for a week's vacation, Mr. Rogers invited all of us to chill with him for a day at his summer home on Nantucket.
We had a glorious time. Mr. Rogers sang songs to us, played with us in the sand and told us stories about our friends from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. It was a day I have never stopped glowing about.
Twenty years later, in 2001, I went to see Mr. Rogers again. I was working on a story about neighbors fighting, and it felt appropriate to ask for insights from my all-time favorite neighbor. My idea was to play tapes for Mr. Rogers of people in my neighborhood in Chicago and see if I could get him to mediate some real-life disputes.
I was skeptical that it would work out. It's one thing to know how to change your shoes and feed the goldfish; it's something else to deal with, say, the tensions and complexities of gentrification. We met at the TV studio in Pittsburgh where Mr. Rogers filmed his shows. He welcomed me beaming, a spry and slender old man.
"Last time I saw you, you could pick me up in your arms," I said. "I doubt you could do that now."
"Well hey, we could try!" he said, laughing.
We talked for hours. He was kid-like and curious, an utterly engaged listener, more interested in the details of my life than in talking about his own. He broke out hand puppets � King Friday, Daniel Striped Tiger, X the Owl. It was both eerie and dazzling to see him carry on conversations with them, slipping effortlessly among their voices and his own.
I told him about my upstairs neighbor, who hated my loud music and always banged on her floor with a broom to get me to turn it down. Mr. Rogers said, "I will always uphold a person's right to silence." He said he'd been staying at a motel recently and the traffic outside his window was so loud that he'd gathered some pillows and slept in the closet.
"That's what I should suggest to my neighbor," I said.
Mr. Rogers laughed. But then he suggested I talk to the woman upstairs. "It's so easy to condemn when we don't know," he said. If he had a dispute like that with his neighbor, he said, "I would hope I would be brave enough to visit."
In my neighborhood, I told Mr. Rogers, everyone seemed to fear each other. The people moving in feared the people already there, and vice versa, and everyone feared the teenagers who cruised up and down the boulevard. We listened to some of the tapes I'd brought. "The worst thing is, people seem afraid to talk to each other," I said. I wanted to know why.
Mr. Rogers sat quietly for 15 full seconds. "Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us." His eyes seemed to be watering.
When the interview was over Mr. Rogers gave me a ride back to my hotel. We got in his car and edged out of the parking lot. The road was packed with rush-hour traffic. Mr. Rogers tapped on his left blinker and we sat there for a few minutes, waiting for a chance to pull out.
"It's always hard to turn left out of here," he said, though he showed no signs of impatience.
I wondered if Mr. Rogers, who died yesterday, was one of those unflappable saint-like types. I asked him: Don't you ever just get frustrated?
He smiled. "Sure. Sometimes. Sometimes I do. Don't you?"
Davy Rothbart, publisher of Found magazine, is a contributor to the radio program "This American Life."
