The Hour cometh

“Nobody but Fred would have thought of doing that for adults. Take number 19 —

Mr. Fred Rogers :

Thank you for your poems and your thoughts about loving poetry and music. You really inspired us to make this program. I'll be with you next time. 

But he wasn't making the kind of connections with adults on television that he thought he might be able to make. 

I remember opening the paper and reading about a child jumping off a roof with a towel around his neck because he was playing Superman. 

And there had been a lot of stories like that. Some children died because of the injuries. I read it to Fred. 

It hit him, because he thought he had covered all that there was to say in child development, but this was new. 

Fred didn't become angry a lot, but he just became so angry about the fact that people would mislead a small child. 

And angry that it was his medium that was doing this. 

"Yeah, Superman --

I am tired of hearing people, 

who have long ago set aside the concerns of childhood, 

telling everybody What Children really Need. 

I'll tell You What Children Need --

They need adults who will protect them 

from the ever-ready 

molders of their world. 

That was the moment Fred said, "I wonder if we could do a week on superheroes, talking about the pretend-ness of it." 

Very quickly, we came back with the show. 

Mm-hmm. Uh, careful, Ana. -I don't want you to... -I think I'm flying. -I am! I'm flying! -No, you're falling! What is going on here? Oh, Ana was trying to fly. I was using my super-skirt, and I was going through the air. 

Yes, but you were going down, and you might have gotten hurt. 

That's right, Ana. You have to be really careful with super-things. 

He was cool with every kid. That's the whole thing. 

I mean, there were little... 

Kids that were... 

They were little bastards. 

They were just rowdy, and Fred never said, 

"This Kid's a dick -- Get him out of here." 

You know, I mean, I sure would've. 

Fred used to say that the outside world of children's lives has changed, but their insides haven't. He realized that his work wasn't through. I'm Fred Rogers, and I'd like to talk with you about make-believe. When it goes to the next level is in the 1980s when he goes to the theme weeks. I mean, to... to do a week on death... "Oh, hi, kids. We're gonna do a week on death." On divorce. Some people get married, and after a while, they're so unhappy with each other that they don't want to be married anymore. 

On children getting lost — Man, that's guts. 

Help! Help, help! Help, please, everybody! 

There's a piece of paper that I accidentally ran into. 

And he typed in this little sheet of paper 

about how He Couldn't Do It, 

that he didn't think He was up to The Task --

"Am I kidding myself that I'm able to write a script again?

Am I really just whistling Dixie? 

I wonder. 

If I don't get down to it, 

I'll never really know. 

Why don't I Trust Myself? 

After all these years, 

it's just as bad as ever. 

The Hour cometh, and 

now is when I've got to Do it. 

Get to it, Fred. Get to it. 

But don't let anybody 

ever tell anybody else 

that it was easy. It wasn't." 

The time that I was with him going on a New York City subway, all the children in that crowded subway car began singing the neighborhood song. He might as well have been an animated figure stepped into real life. Could I try that? I brought my skates with me. I can try. Whoa. -What else do you like to do? -Moonwalk. Moonwalk? You got it. Yeah. People thought he was such an important American figure, they wanted him to speak out on the issues of the day. And so Fred grew pretty comfortably into more of a public role. You know, the earth is a name for the place where everybody lives. And the moon is the name for the place where the astronauts go.