I learned Fred Rogers had died while I was on the 2 train.
I don’t remember where I was going on February 27, 2003, only that I was heading downtown. Someone got on the train at 72nd Street and said out loud, to no one in particular, “Oh my God! Mr. Rogers died!”
After a collective gasp, everyone immediately began to talk to each other. Somewhere before Times Square, a quiet chorus of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” had started. As I remember it, everyone sang or nodded along. When the doors opened at 42nd Street, new passengers looked startled by the singing, until someone barked in that New York way, “What’s going on!?”
That routine happened in the same order at every station until I got off at Chambers Street: the demand for information, the gasps, the talking and then the singing along.
There is something special about a moment that people get to experience all at once. It’s partly why the very idea that Mexico might have had a self-induced earthquake in collective World Cup glee is so delightful.
I think about that subway ride often, especially lately. It’s such a tender memory precisely because the news of Rogers’ passing caused us to take off our subway masks long enough to see each other. I think he would have loved that. (He also might have enjoyed that this newly released documentary about his life’s work has become such a hit.)
But it was also a chance to process an event with real people in real time. That doesn’t happen very often.
These days, our news tends to come from an always-on machine in our hands, which lacks the basic rules of judicious engagement that New York subway riders intuitively follow. It’s just a fire hose in your head. By the time we get to work or school, we’re sitting in a flood of information, some real, some not. Sometimes it’s a trade war, sometimes it’s Bey and Jay.
All weekend, my fire hose was consumed by a massive fight about asylum seekers at the U.S. border. People have also been debating whether or not a chain-linked wall enclosing traumatized children should really be called a fence. That’s probably why I woke up with Mr. Rogers on my mind.
Turns out, he still has my back. A few months before Rogers died, he recorded a final message to his now-adult fans, a love letter to the people he’d helped raise. Give it a listen; it’s a balm for a difficult age.
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.
And what’s more, I’m so grateful to you, for helping the children in your life to know that you’ll do everything you can to keep them safe. And to help them express their feelings in ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods.
It’s such a good feeling to know that we’re lifelong friends.
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.
And what’s more, I’m so grateful to you, for helping the children in your life to know that you’ll do everything you can to keep them safe. And to help them express their feelings in ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods.
It’s such a good feeling to know that we’re lifelong friends.
Have a good Monday, friends.