For the week of March 26 - April 1, 2003

Mr. Rogers, Miss Smart and missed innocence

Commentary by JoELLEN COLLINS

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The other day at the elementary school where I work, I mentioned Mr. Rogers’ name in front of a gathering of students. My little homage slipped out. Most of the children didn’t react; the adults who were there did. My bet is that many of those grown-ups spent hours as children watching Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street.

Even today, when I hear the theme song from Sesame Street, I am nostalgic for the era of my children’s youth, one I see as relatively innocent. My daughters watched "The Brady Bunch," "Sesame Street," and "Mr. Rogers." Most of the rest of their after-school hours were concentrated on intense play with the many children in our neighborhood. I don’t recall worrying about the negative influences of violent depictions on the tube, nor did I find much to be objectionable in terms of too-early or precocious sexual behavior. MTV hadn’t yet become a huge influence.

Of course there have always been unsavory events: When I was a child in Burbank, Calif., my mother kept a knife near the front door to ward off the prowlers who terrified our cluster of modest tract houses. By the time my own children were born, the world seemed to be growing both more dangerous and filled with provocative and tempting sexuality; the era of liberation was in full swing and movies began to be rated; Barbie and Ken often wore very brief costumes. At the beach in Malibu, a stranger later convicted of child endangerment was responsible for a horrible chapter in my daughter’s life. Later, when we moved to Santa Monica, the children at Roosevelt School were warned to walk in pairs and not to accept rides from a man in a van seen frequenting the neighborhood. There were urban tales and, indeed, some valid fears.

So I certainly don’t claim our environment has always been entirely safe and wholesome, but we did feel a sense of control over our children’s safety. And we had Mr. Rogers. He personified the values we tried to maintain and the sense of security we all hoped to have in our homes. He took time and spoke slowly of positive things to children. There was a sense of regularity every time he came in and went to his closet in the same predictable way. His voice calmed. For over 30 years he was an adult male friend to all, a kind teacher and authority figure. According to Joyce Millman of the New York Times, he was an "unswervingly decent antidote to the hard sell of kid culture and the commercialization of innocence."

Children have a brief window for innocence: What worries me most is losing that precious commodity too early in dangerous and provocative times. The spate of very public abductions of children in the recent past, most exemplified by Elizabeth Smart’s ordeal, has created a climate of fear, distrust and anxiety. We worry when our children carry on with simple activities like walking to school or going to the neighborhood market. It doesn’t matter that statistics support the thesis that child abductions are mainly promulgated by family members; it doesn't help to view the incidences as more obvious because of the glare of incessant media attention. No, many parents are much more wary of the budding independence of their offspring; they fear that a bike ride in unknown territory might be dangerous. I will miss Mr. Rodgers. I wonder how he would view the at-first exhilarating news that Elizabeth Smart was found alive and apparently, at least physically, well. I was thrilled when I heard she was not dead. Most abductions do not result in such happy reunions. However, my initial joy has been supplanted by a realization that she will most likely suffer long-range and perhaps debilitating effects from her nine-month ordeal. We often hear statistics about a fire or bombing that note the dead. As horrible as those figures are, they seldom take into account the other victims—the wounded survivors. Just because someone doesn’t die, we tend to sigh with relief, not thinking about the devastating wounds of those left behind. Still languishing in hospitals in the Middle East are those who didn’t die in suicide bombings, many maimed, missing limbs or other body parts. Recent nightclub fires have left survivors who are suffering from excruciating burns.

We probably have put to rest our fears for Elizabeth Smart. We know her family is grateful beyond measure for her "safe" return. I hope the media gives her some peace. I fear she has indeed been scarred in unknown ways by her kidnapping, and also that her family will reap the negative results of her ordeal … the dynamics of the pain for her siblings being just one. At the very least, Elizabeth may have lost her innocence prematurely.

I wish Mr. Rodgers could assure me that we are OK. I’d like to put aside my fears and visit, even for a few minutes, his Neighborhood of Make-Believe. In the midst of terrorist insurgencies, the hatred around the world exhibited towards the country I love, the lack of a sense of security as wars occur and unstable leaders acquire nuclear capability, in a time when the image of an abandoned boys’ bicycle sends shivers through parents, we need him now more than ever.

 

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