Autor:    Julián Silva Puentes

MISTER ROGERS

I confess that after seeing the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks, I wanted to be more like Mr. Rogers and less like myself. I wanted to take an interest in people of all races and religions and tell them to their faces what they need to hear, to help them get out of one of those bad spells that seem like they will never end. I wanted to walk down the street and say “how are you, friend?” to a stranger, to offer him a smile and perhaps the answer to all his problems without expecting anything in return, not even one of those insults so recurrent in this crowded city of screaming, rain and cold that is Bogotá.

The writer Tom Junod tells us in his article Can you say hero (Esquire magazine, November 1, 1998), on which the film A beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was based, that Mr. Rogers once visited to a fan of his show, a boy with cerebral palsy, and to the boy´s surprise, Mr. Rogers asked him to pray for him. From that moment on, the boy, who before meeting Mr. Rogers told his mother how much he wanted to die, kept Mr. Rogers in his prayers and stopped talking about death, because he thought that if Mr. Rogers cares of a child, God must care about him too.

The Mister Rogers Neighborhood shows aired from 1968 to 2001 in the USA.

In this part of America where I live in the early 90´s there was a Peruvian television show for children starring models in shorts and knee-high boots who danced to a song about clouds, light beams and kites. There was also a show where a grown man spoke with a child´s voice and another about a rather sad clown named Mickey the clown; the first was Mexican, the second, Colombian.

Like Mickey the clown, I too am Colombian. I am 40 years old, and long ago I stopped being a child.

Many years ago, when I had not stopped being a child, I saw on television the man with the voice of a child and the sad clown as well. I saw the Peruvian presenters very willingly, because they were beautiful and they wore shorts and knee-high boots.

On Saturdays, I turned on the television early in the morning in my mother´s room, and they were there. “Everything will be fine”, they said. And then everything was fine. They smiled, jumped, played cartoons and kept singing. “Everything is fine, mom”, I would say to my mother every time I saw her sad.

After some time, all was not well for one of the Peruvian girls on TV. One Saturday morning, the most beautiful of them, with her 21, put a gun to her head and fired.

There are few laughs that mean what a smile is supposed to mean. Smiling at the poor from whom you are going to take his house because he cannot pay his mortgage loan payments is not a laughing matter. Some years ago, when I worked as a collector for a certain bank, I had to smile because sometimes it is better than crying. I also smiled because the bank demanded it of me.

“Ma´am, I must inform you that if you do not pay this week, the bank will auction your house”, said a very smiling version of myself.

I could smile even when they threatened me with the dog of the house. I could smile when they begged me to give them more time to pay for what they didn´t have, and I could smile when they insulted my mother and wished me a life full of terrors in hell.

“I hope you have a big, luxurious house one day with a beautiful woman and healthy, beautiful children —a man once told me—, so I can put fire on it with all of you inside!”.

I would leave work and go to the bar on the corner of my house. I would tell the bartender the details of my day, and after four tequilas and eyes on the back of my neck, I would forget that I had wanted to cry instead of smile.

—It is what it is —the bartender told me.

—Someone must do it —I answered, holding on to the bar to keep from falling off the chair.

When you are 28 years old, you don´t care what happens to the world as long as they leave you alone. I must have convinced myself many times that what I was doing was right because “someone had to do it”. In the world of law, the bad guys are not so bad when they commit the most heinous scoundrels protected by the law. The law of the one who has and the lawlessness of the one who does not have.

Some years ago, when I was not the age that I am now, and I lost my job at the bank of smiles and houses taken away, I had one of those bad spells that it seems will never end. Every day I opened my eyes and wondered what would become of my life. I looked at the ceiling and repeated to myself in the solitude of a morning without prospects, “this will pass”.

In the street I saw the poor asking for money with their tattered clothes, and I smiled at them because I had nothing else to give them. I didn´t have money in my pockets either, but at least I had my smile that doesn´t cost a penny. Then I would smile at them. And I smiled at them because I had nothing else to give them.

In Tom Junod´s article, Tom tells us that one day Mister Rogers took the subway in New York. Despite the fact that all the passengers recognized him, no one approached to ask for an autograph. They sang. They all did. Both children and adults sang the song from his 30-year-old show in chorus. They sang “It´s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighborhood. Would you be mine?...”.

Perhaps if the Peruvian television presenter had been in that subway, she would have started singing instead of thinking about the reasons why she should end her life without having started living it.

Many years ago, when I was not the age that I am now, and I had a really bad time, I learned that everything in this life is transitory. One day you tell a person that you will take away their house and the next you lose the means to pay for yours.

The Peruvian presenter was 21 when she committed suicide, and I was 10 when I found out. That morning, hearing the news, I swear that I stopped being a child. Some years ago one, of my uncles took his own life at 22, almost the same age as she was. I was 4 years old, and I hardly remember it.

I don´t remember my suicidal uncle, but I do remember the oldest of his brothers screaming at my grandmother´s house. Such a thing is not forgotten, no matter how young you are to understand it. “My God, why!”, my mother said. That´s how little I remember. “My God, why did you do it!”, my mother repeated over and over again in the solitude of her silence.

My uncle was 22 years old when he shot himself in the head in the manner of the Peruvian presenter. He must have had one of those streaks that never seems to end. I wish I was old enough to tell my uncle and the presenter that that would pass too. Nothing is forever, neither luck nor bad fortune; things are simply that way because they could not be otherwise.

Now that I´m no longer a child, I wonder if they weren´t scared kids themselves when they said goodbye to this life. Being 21 or 22 years old does not exempt you from being afraid of the night and from being unable to find your place in the world.

Tom Junod tells us that Mister Rogers knew how difficult it is to be a child because he once was. He also tells us that compassion is something to be practiced every day with the discipline of an Olympian.

—It was very smart to ask the child with cerebral palsy to pray for you —Tom Junod said to Mister Rogers—, because it made him stop thinking about his difficult situation and think of someone other than himself.

—That wasn´t why I asked the boy to pray for me —Mister Rogers replied.

—Then why did you do it?

—To tell God about me —said Mr. Rogers, and he added—: Someone with so many obstacles to overcome in this life must be very close to him.

It must be nice to believe that there is something or someone greater than all our problems together, and that he is also willing to welcome us with open arms regardless of the abhorrent things we have done in our lives; or simply to help us understand that our problems are not bigger than the circumstances that created them. Everything will pass, that´s the truth. Both the bad and the good.

If we could have a little compassion for ourselves and for those who are having a really bad time, maybe we could be a little more like Mister Rogers than ourselves in our worst moments.

“So let´s make the most of this beautiful day, since we´re together, we migrate as well say, would you be mine, could you be mine? Won´t you be my neighbor?”. I confess that I have been humming that song since I saw the movie two weeks ago. Since then, I have thought a lot about my uncle, the Peruvian TV host, and how difficult it is to practice compassion when you are at the top and your sense of empathy is at an all-time low. It is strange, but when I have felt the pain of others the most, it has been when my life was at its worst. I could see one of those street ghosts and smile at him without judging the reasons why he ended up there. Any of us can end there. You only need to turn down the wrong street once, and your circumstances go downhill with you in front.