Amanda5834

Thank you, Cellinde, for easing some of my depression!

A few months before he passed away in 2003, a 74 year old children’s television host sat down in the same studio where he had filmed 895 episodes over 33 years and recorded one last message. It wasn’t for children. It was for the adults who had grown up watching him.

Fred Rogers hosted Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on American public television from 1968 to 2001. For over three decades he walked into the same set, changed into a cardigan and sneakers, looked directly into the camera, and spoke to children as if each one of them was the only person in the room. He never raised his voice, never talked down to his audience, and never rushed a single moment.

In that final recording, he looked into the camera one last time and said “I’m just so proud of all of you who have grown up with us. And I know how tough it is some days to look with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead. But I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger. I like you just the way you are.”

I comment more than I post these days. My interest isn’t what it used to be I guess. And then Sam posts about his mistake. I won’t call it an apology, because that’s not what it is.

Just a day prior to that he made a comment to Fallon about not wanting to put in the work to become a magician and becoming an actor instead because he just had to wear clothes to become somebody else.

Somehow my brain is connecting the two. When you don’t want to put in the work, you don’t read what you sign, you don’t follow the rules because you probably didn’t read them, you don’t surround yourself with the right people to help your business, and sometimes you just phone in your lines because in the back of your head you think the clothes will do the work for you.

I already hear those saying that he works so hard. Does he really? He has a lot going on at the same time, I’ll grant him that, but does he really put in the work, or does he just wing it half the time?

Yes, signing booze bottles, smiling and being hugged by strangers for days can be tiring, but then you get to go on vacation for weeks.

And if we get back to the business at hand, even his “apology” isn’t even an apology, it’s just an admission that he messed up, again half baked. See the pattern?

But to end on a good note, I will give him points for saying he made a mistake. That must have been really hard for him, given how he reacted when called out in the past.