“As I was at five, so I am now,” Tolstoy wrote,
in his old age, and I think that is pretty much true for many men.
While I may not maintain the same burning fascination for mummies, G.I.
Joe or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I had in 1965, there is
definitely the kindergartener on permanent naptime somewhere deep in the
old psyche, who stirs on his low cot whenever, say, a firetruck goes
by, or there’s candy.
That boy sat up with a start Friday morning,
early. I had checked the newspapers online, to see what was cooking and,
not finding much, drifted over to what I consider the outliers of
popular culture — the Daily Beast, the Drudge Report and Google Trends.
If you haven’t seen Google Trends, it’s a fun tool —
a snapshot of what people are interested in right now, how the hot
trends stack up against the volume of overall Google searches.
Friday morning about 5:30, the top ten were the
standard mix: mostly sports (“LeBron James,” “Miami Heat” “Chad
Ochocino,” “Wade Davis”); a tragedy (No. 1, “Bob Welch,” the singer who
killed himself); a strange medical topic (“body dysmorphic disorder”)
and there, at position No. 5, something truly unexpected: “Mr. Rogers.”
Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister who, from
1968 to 2001, was the genial, cardigan-sweater-wearing host of “Mr.
Rogers Neighborhood” on public television. It was a show for children
though, as a child, I never liked him — by the time he debuted, I was a
worldly 8-year-old, given over to hip concerns like comic books and
zeppelins. Besides, I had been a Captain Kangaroo boy, savoring the more
bumptuous world of knock-knock jokes and ping pong ball drops. Of
course I wouldn’t like Mr. Rogers — it would be like a Three Stooges fan
embracing the dance films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
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