I like being your blog neighbor

I have always wanted to have a neighbor
Just like you!
I have always wanted to live in a
Neighborhood with you.
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day;
Since we’re together we might as well say,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?

Ok, I’m going to make a rash statement here, if you don’t like Mister Rogers then we can’t be friends. Sorry, but there is a line that I must draw and this is it. I can accept many things – biting the heads off of chickens, running me down with a driving lawn mower, torturing me as a pre-teen by sticking my hand in a bowl of water while I’m sleeping to see if I’ll wet my sleeping bag, eating cornnuts in my presence, even teasing me for being homeless in the near future – but this, oh this, we will just not be friends if you have any disdain for Mister Rogers.

The cardigan (or sweater if cardigan sounds too girly), the slippers, the puppet, the perfectly coiffed hair, the soothing voice, and the smile, Mister Rogers was and is a childhood breath of fresh air.

So you will join me in rejoicing that I happened upon a small little book that brings such joy and a smile to my face called “The World According to Mister Rogers – Important Things to Remember”. And because this is a book about Mister Rogers, it of course has a sketch of a cardigan/sweater on the cover.

And this little book has inspired me, so you may be hearing a bit from Mister Rogers and me in the near future, because, well, he makes me think, and when I think I write, and when I write I post, and then you read and the circle is completed.

So today I venture back to my childhood, sitting in front of the television (one with a dial) and remember the joy of the opening song (sing it with me, you know you remember the tune and the words are above). Won’t you be my neighbor?

One last thing, the foreword of the book is written by Mister Rogers’s wife (I can’t call him by his first name because that almost seems sacrilegious) and she opens with a quote that he carried in his wallet. This is a great quote and one I can picture him returning to over and over again as he pulled a bill from his wallet in everyday circumstances.

So I leave you with this quote:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men, and the love of little children, who has filled his niche and accomplished his task, who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul, who has never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty or failed to express it, who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had, whose life was an inspiration, whose memory a benediction.
- Bessie Anderson Stanley