I just saw this thread. It's sad to learn that Bob Keeshan and Fred Rogers have both died recently. When I was a child, I frequently watched both their shows. My favorite thing on Captain Kangaroo was the cartoon about a kid named Simon whose drawings all came to life. The theme song went "You know my name is Simon and the things I draw come true." I can remember one episode where he came across the math problems he had done in school. I also remember Moose and Rabbit and the ping pong balls, and I remember Mr. Greenjeans. Before he was Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan was Clarabell the clown on the Howdy Doody show. That was before my time, but I do remember Keeshan whenever I look at the Howdy Dooit lampoon that Mad did.
My favorite thing on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood was always the Land of Make-Believe. I would sometimes watch it only for that and skip the rest. I wasn't usually very interested in learning what he had to tell us of his neighborhood. The most interesting one I can remember was when he went to a robot factory that made remote-controlled robots that resembled R2D2.
I used to make fun of Mr. Rogers for not being very manly. He seemed like something of a wuss. But I grew to respect him more when I became an adult. I came to realize that he was someone who truly respected and cared for children. When I was teaching a UU RE class to 4th-6th graders a couple years ago, I taught a lesson on dealing with the death of a loved one, and I brought in a video tape that the library had of Mr. Rogers talking about the death of a pet fish. Mr. Rogers handled the subject with respect, compassion, and concern for the feelings of children. I brought in pictures of a pet cat who had died, and overall our discussion of the subject went well.
Within only weeks or months after teaching this lesson, my own father died. That was what precipitated my temporary departure from this site. With my father's death, I wasn't interested in writing humor, and when I finally did become interested in it again, inertia and being busy with other things kept me away a while longer.
Getting back to Mr. Rogers, I expect that his episode on the dead fish probably helped prepare me in some way for dealing with my father's death. In time, I did get over my his death. My approach to dealing with it was to just let the feelings wash over me without resisting them, letting them run their course until they went away. I even encouraged this process by going to a movie where several characters died gruesome, gory deaths. This was also to help make the notion of his death more real to me, because I wasn't there to see the body. In addition to letting the feelings of shock and grief run their course, I began turning to off-line friends for emotional support. As the initial feelings of shock receded, as I knew they eventually would, I focused more on enjoying my life, thereby building myself back up. In time, I came back here, because writing comic strips is one of the things I really enjoy doing.
Naturally, it's less of a shock when people I know only from TV die. Also, Keeshan and Rogers were both old and retired. Still, as far as TV surrogates go, both of them were father figures. That's probably why learning of their deaths has stirred up some of my feelings about my father's death. I'll miss them both.
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