Daniel StripeTiger :
Well, it took me so long to get tame.
I try to understand how
everybody else is working at it.
Lady Aberlin :
Sometimes it isn't easy.
Daniel StripeTiger :
No, but it's worth a try.
Daniel Striped Tiger –
Daniel Striped Tiger is the first puppet ever to appear on Children’s Corner and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
He is a shy tiger who lives in a non-functioning grandfather clock with no hands (because, in make-believe, it is whatever time you imagine).
Despite his shyness, Daniel exhibits wisdom and intelligence when he does speak.
His favorite toy is a small dump truck,
and he wears a watch on one arm because
“when you live in a clock you really should know what time it is.”
He was the ring bearer for Betty and James’s wedding.
He was named after Dorothy Daniel, who gave Fred his first puppet.
Daniel was the puppet most frequently brought along by Rogers for live performances
and Rogers stated that Daniel represented certain aspects of his personality.
In July 2011, PBS announced that
Daniel’s son (also named Daniel)
would be the star of his own show
Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.
Daniel was pretty much Fred.
He did all the voices, but, uh...
But I think Daniel was
The Real Fred.
Daniel StripeTiger :
Maybe I could talk about clocks and loving... And things like that.
Daniel StripeTiger :
A, b, c, d, f, g, j, k, l, m, s...
Oh, Lady aberlin, I just
can't go to school tomorrow.
Why not, Daniel?
Daniel StripeTiger :
Because I don't know everything.
Daniel is articulating the fears and anxieties and feelings that Fred had as a child, but that many children have.
He never forgot how vulnerable it was to be a kid.
You know, you're this little thing.
Everything else in the world
is bigger than you are,
and you have to learn everything that helps you get through in life.
I think that it just never left him.
Whatever those scars of his life were, he wanted to help heal that wound, maybe?
Fred Rogers :
It's a lot easier, even as an adult, for me to have Daniel say...
"I'm really scared. Do you think
maybe you could give me a hug?"
You know? That would be hard for me to say,
"I'm really scared. Do you think you could give me a hug?"
So the difference from the...
[indicates the length of his arm]
From here to here, that doesn't seem very far, but...
It was efficacious, to say the least.
A car ran over the jaw of your cat?
Mm-hmm.
And what happened?
It was bleeding.
Oh.
They tried and fixed it,
but they fixed it for a half a day,
but then it died.
But then it died?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, I think that's scary.
All you had to do was see Fred inhabit Daniel to...
Really kind of figure it out.
I mean, they were symbiotic.
As strange as it is to see a grown
man have a symbiotic relationship
with kind of a dingy, you know,
worn-out little sock puppet,
he definitely had that.
Daniel StripeTiger :
Would you give me a hug?
Mm-hmm.
Daniel StripeTiger :
Thank you. 'Cause I needed that.
I better go back in the case, Mr. Rogers.
Okay, Daniel.
Daniel StripeTiger :
He's really nice.
You could talk to him.
Okay, Daniel.
Daniel StripeTiger :
Just a minute. I want to show you something.
Okay. Wonder what.
It's a balloon.
Oh, a balloon.
Could you blow it up for me?
Surely.
So, this is the first year of mister Rogers' neighborhood.
Daniel striped tiger is there with
Lady Aberlin, asking her to blow
a balloon up and then let the air out.
You wonder why this is in there.
Uh, they can't hear.
Can you hear on any of these?
There's something I want to ask you.
What does "assassination" mean?
What happened? Do you know?
Somebody said he's been shot.
Let's roll some videotape
on this out here, friends.
Ha-have you heard
that word a lot today?
Yes. And I didn't know what it meant.
Well... It means...
Somebody getting killed... ...in a...
A sort of surprise way.
That's what happened, you know.
That man killed that other man.
A lot of people are sad and scared
about it, you know.
I'd rather talk about it
some other day.
Whenever you like.
Fred Rogers :
I felt that I had to speak to the families of our country about grief.
A plea not to leave the children isolated and at the mercy of their own fantasies of loss and destruction.
Children have very deep feelings just the way parents do, just the way everybody does.
And our striving to understand those feelings and to better respond to them is what I feel is a most important task in our world.
He realized that if he really wanted to communicate,
the most important thing is to listen.
'Cause there's so many people who will just lump 'em all together and say, "hey, kids, come along. We'll see the next cartoon."
And they couldn't care less about
what that cartoon is saying
to the child about such things
as human dignity.
Remember what was happening
for children's television.
It was speeding up.
Fred was pretty radical in television
for that day in that he used
time totally differently.
To Fred, silence was his delight.
Fred took an egg timer and said,
"Do you want to know how long
a minute is? Here.
We're going to show you."
And we just sat there
for the whole minute.
There's a lot of slow space.
There's no wasted space. In. Out.
I think silence is one of the
greatest gifts that we have.
His questions are direct, simple, short, and then he waits.
Yo-Yo Ma :
He interviewed me, and he put his face about three inches away from my face, says, "It's so nice to see you and to be with you."
It scared the living daylights out of me.
But I realized this is what children do with adults.
And sometimes after they answer,
he doesn't say anything else.
So they say a little bit more.
It's-it's a... it's a perfect
interviewing trick.
!…Very funny. Very funny.
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