A Hero and His Army of Kindness

Photo from Wikipedia

Last Christmas I received a Mr. Rogers quote a day daily calendar from Cheryl. Every page is a different quote for every weekday. For the weekends there are only 1 quote for Saturday and Sunday.
It’s a fantastic calendar and I love it.

Now, I’m quite certain that anyone reading this will know who Fred Rogers was.

When I was young I would always watch Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood when it was on.
As I got older I didn’t watch him as much but would often sit down and watch or stop for a few minutes as my sister Hayley watched him.

Of course in later years kids would goof on Mr. Rogers and joke about his style.
National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live even did spoofs of him which he took in stride. He was always a good sport as long as there was no cursing or adult themes involved.

There are so many things that Mr. Rogers did and so many messages that he passed along.
It is impossible to measure the lasting impact that he had on so many lives, big and small, young and old.
He wouldn’t hesitate to address serious topics such as war, death, divorce.
He respected the children enough to not insult their intelligence and talk to them about real or scary things.
But he did it in such a way that didn’t blast them and shock or traumatize their souls.

I’ve often wondered if there has been anyone quite like him. There are many that I think have come close to him such as Canadian legends Mr. Dressup and The Friendly Giant but in my opinion he stood alone above all.

I was not really surprised to learn that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. However, I am still surprised and impressed at how little he brought religion into his show.
Even my calendar only has references to religion a couple of times.

Photo from misterrogers.org

He was able to teach love and decency to all and remain inclusive of anyone and everyone on the planet.

I remember the day that he passed away. I felt sad. I had not really been following news of his life and didn’t even know that he was sick.

This may seem a bit strange but since his passing I have come to idolize Fred Rogers. This gets deeper with every article, movie or documentary about him.
I’ve actually shed more tears about his passing in the last few years than any time in the past.

I’m not certain why but I decided that every day in 2021 I would take the daily quotes and post them to my Facebook and Twitter timelines.
Just for fun I also message them to Cheryl, Tyler and Braydon.

I regret that my sons never had a chance to watch him but I hope that with every quote of his that they get from me they realize what a wonderful man he was.

Fred Rogers did something that very few have ever done in history.
He created an army of love one television episode at a time.

The quote today is one of my absolute favourites.

“We parents are the holders of a priceless gift, a gift we received from countless generations we never knew, a gift that only we now possess and only we can give to our children.” - Mr. Rogers quote of the day

One of my good friends didn’t quite understand what this was about.
I tried to explain as best as I could what this message meant to me.

“The makeup of all of us is the result of the many generations before us going all the way back to star stuff and the origins of life. There are people going back hundreds of years in our family lines that we will likely never have a clue about, yet physical and mental traits of them have come down to us. We pass them down to our children and the line will continue on into people that will probably never even know our names. Some of these traits are not so great. However, in true Mr. Roger's style, he has chosen to look on the positive side and sees all of them as "gifts".”

I hope that I got it right.

Stay well,
Tim

“You are special. You’re special to me. There’s only one in this wonderful world.”

Not Too Bad if I Do Say

Look at this!
Now I know that all of my handyman/woman friends are going to say Pffftt and roll their eyes but this is huge for me.

I’ll start this off by mentioning that I am not handy at all and projects don’t often end well for me. For example, when Cheryl and I lived in a condo in Mississauga I tried to install a ceiling fan in the dining room. I went to the panel and turned the power off. I swear I did. And then went over to deal with the fan. Long story short, electricity found its way through somehow and I fried the wall switch, ceiling fan, and myself.

So when I’m at the gym this morning and Cheryl texts me that the front doorknob has come off again I felt that twinge of anxiety in my stomach and did a couple of extra sets on the weights to burn off a bit of steam before the fun starts.
I thought “it’s no big deal, I’ve fixed that before.” It’s just a matter of sliding the knob back onto the screws and tightening them. I’ve got this.
I put the knob on the screws and tightened them.
It didn’t work. The flappy button on the front of the door won’t go down. Great.

This is going into new territory. I’m going to take the front handle and flappy thing off. I carefully unscrewed it and took it off. Some pieces and a screw fell off into my hand. Oh oh. I figured that the pieces can go back and I’ll just put that screw back. Except I have to take the other screw off before I could put the pieces back.

When I loosened the other screw a spring thing and 2 pieces that go with it popped out!
Oh no. I didn’t see how and where they fit together!

Suddenly the flappy thing falls onto the floor and a little pin looking thing that goes with it!
That’s not fair! The flappy thing was okay until now!
I put them on the floor to worry about them later.

Inside the handle part there was a gear thing and other stuff. For some reason the springy thing and its other parts would not go back onto the gear thing. So I pried off the gear and the other things and put them on the floor with my fresh pile of springs and gears and stuff.

Every single part of this mechanism was now sitting on the floor disconnected to all of the other parts.

I can’t describe the feeling of despair that I felt now realizing that I have ruined the whole thing.

That’s why I call people to help me with these things.

“Maybe your father can help?” Cheryl said.

I sat on the floor with greasy hands and my pile of stuff and thought “No way! I’m going to try this again!”

I looked really hard at these things and started from the last piece that fell out of my hands onto the floor.
The gear thing and its parts went in pretty well.
I was happy.

Fortunately it appeared that nothing was broken. The pieces had just fell apart when a screw fell out.

The springy thing and its friends went in easily.
I tightened the handle and flappy part screws.
It looked good.
Now, I slowly slid the handle and flappy thing back into place.
It didn’t go nicely. It was wrong somehow.

I wiggled it and pushed and it eventually clicked into place. Nice.
When I tried to push the flappy thing it didn’t budge.
The springy thing and parts were in backwards. What the heck.

Anyway, a while later when I had switched the gear thing and everything the other way I tried again.

It worked!

The knob wasn’t on though and I still needed to tighten the handle.
When I turned the screw the whole thing started to pop out.
With Cheryl’s help I held the parts and she tightened the screws.
The final thing was putting that stupid knob on and tightening it.
I did that.

The moment of truth.

I pushed the flappy thing. It worked!

Now, I turned the knob very slowly and watched for parts to fly.

It worked!

“Holy crap!” I exclaimed.
Cheryl rushed over to see what was wrong.
I told her to push that and turn that.

She smiled when she realized that I had fixed it and gave me a hug.

A good way to start my day.

As long as I stay away from the front door and don’t try to fix anything else today. 🙂