Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (67 page)

GOODBYE, NEIGHBOR

Rogers taped nearly 900 episodes of
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
over its more than 30 years on the air. They’re still broadcast by more than 300 public television stations around the United States as well as in Canada, the Philippines, Guam, and other countries around the world. Videotapes of the show are used to teach English to non-native speakers (singer Ricky Martin credits Mr. Rogers with teaching him to speak English).

Rogers retired from producing new episodes of the show in December 2000, and the last new episode aired in August 2001. He came out of retirement briefly in 2002 to record public service announcements advising parents on how to help children deal with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He made his last public appearance on January 1, 2003, when he served as Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade and tossed the coin for the Rose Bowl Game. Mr. Rogers passed away from stomach cancer two months later.

THOUGHTS FROM MR. ROGERS

• “The world is not always a kind place. That’s something children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it’s something they really need our help to understand.”

• “Anything we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds.”

• “People don’t come up to me to talk about the weather. I’ve even had a child come up to me and not even say hello, but instead say right out, ‘Mr. Rogers, my grandmother’s in the hospital.’”

• “So many people have grown up with the ‘Neighborhood,’ I’m just their dad coming along. You know, it’s really fun to go through life with this face.”

One of the most common things people who met Mr. Rogers say about him is that he was the very same person off camera that he was on camera. And yet to the cynical, that seemed hard to believe. Was Fred Rogers really the person he appeared to be on TV…or was he too good to be true? Turn the page to find out
.

The French Poodle isn’t French and the Great Dane isn’t Danish. They’re both from Germany.

NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSI

Like a lot of celebrities, Mr. Rogers was the subject of some preposterous rumors over the years. Here are three of the strangest
.

M
YSTERY:
Why did Mr. Rogers always cover his arms?

URBAN LEGEND:
He was a sniper in Vietnam. He wore long-sleeved shirts, sweaters, and jackets to cover up the many tattoos he got while serving in the military.

THE TRUTH:
Rogers never served in Vietnam or any other war; he began his career in television right after he graduated from college in the early 1950s. So why did he always wear long sleeves? Dressing somewhat formally was a technique he used to establish himself as an authority figure to the children who watched the show.

MYSTERY:
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
is a kids’ show. So how come kids almost never appeared on the show?

URBAN LEGEND:
Rogers was once convicted of abusing children and instead of jail, was sentenced to community service. Appearing on the show for more than three decades was how he served out his sentence. As a convicted child abuser, Rogers wasn’t allowed to be alone with kids—even on the TV show.

THE TRUTH:
Rogers got his start in broadcasting in the early 1950s, before the invention of videotape. Shows had to be broadcast live, which is why kids seldom appeared on
any
kids’ shows back then—they are too unpredictable for live TV.

MYSTERY:
How did Mr. Rogers really feel about kids?

URBAN LEGEND:
After more than three decades of hosting a children’s show, Mr. Rogers showed how he
really
felt about children on his very last show: he gave kids the finger on TV.

THE TRUTH:
There is such a picture floating around on the Internet, but it’s a fake—somebody doctored a real picture to make it look like Rogers was flipping the bird. It never happened. Anyway, by the end of his career new episodes were taped months in advance of broadcast, and such an image would never have been allowed to air.

Number of holes in a Ritz cracker: 7—six in a hexagon shape, and one in the center.

WORD ORIGINS

Ever wonder where certain words came from? Here are the interesting stories behind some of them
.

M
ONEY

Meaning:
Currency; a medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes

Origin:
“Hera, queen of the Greek gods, kept her name out of the vulgate [common speech] until she moved to Rome and became Juno. As Juno Moneta (Juno the Monitress), she presided over a Roman temple where gold was coined. Moneta became the eponym of money, and Moneta’s temple a mint.” (From
Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun
, by Willard Espy)

PADDY WAGON

Meaning:
A police van

Origin:
“A carryover from the days when Irish immigrants were low men on the social totem pole and hence fair game when a roundup of miscreants was needed to create favorable publicity for the law enforcers. Paddy was a common nickname for Irishmen.” (From
Dictionary of Word Origins
, by William and Mary Morris)

EROTIC

Meaning:
Relating to sexual desire or excitement

Origin:
“
Eros
was the god of love, and the fairest of the gods in the Greek pantheon. But he was vain and spoiled and for sport shot his love-poisoned arrows into the hearts of men and gods. At his festival, the
erotia
, married couples of the day were supposed to patch up their differences and end all quarrels. From the Greek name
Eros
comes the word
erotic
, meaning ‘full of sexual desire,’ or ‘morbidly amorous.’” (From
Word Origins
, by Wilfred Funk)

JUGGERNAUT

Meaning:
An overwhelming force that crushes anything in its path

Origin:
“The word comes from Hindi; its origin lies in
Jagganath
, a Hindu god, the Lord of the World. The city of Puri in eastern India is the site of an annual festival in his honor at which the image of the god is carried on a gigantic wheeled vehicle 45 feet high, drawn through the streets by pilgrims. It was said (mostly inaccurately) that fanatical followers would throw themselves under the wheels.” (From
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Allusions
, by Elizabeth Webber and Mike Feinsilber)

New Zealanders eat the most butter annually—about 20 lbs. per person.

COCKTAIL

Meaning:
An alcoholic drink consisting of spirits mixed with other ingredients

Origin:
“One idea is that it came from cockfighting. A cock’s courage was fired up by slipping him a mixture of stale beer, gin, herbs, and flour, which was called
cock-ale
. More likely, the term was coined by Antoine Peychaud, a New Orleans restaurateur. During the 1800s, Antoine made drinks mixed from a number of different liquors. He served the wicked brew in little egg cups called
coquetier
in French. Wanting to give his drinks a special name, he simply Americanized the French word by changing it to cocktail.” (From
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
, by Teri Degler)

PHONY

Meaning:
A fraudulent person or thing

Origin:
“Newspaperman H. L. Mencken suggested that a maker of fake jewelry named Forney is the origin of this word, but few experts agree with him. The majority opinion is that
phony
is an alteration of
fawney
, British slang for a worthless ring. The word probably comes from the
fawney rig
, a con game in which a worthless ring is planted, and when someone ‘finds’ it he is persuaded by a ‘bystander’ that he should pay the bystander for his share in the find.” (From
Word and Phrase Origins
, by Robert Hendrickson)

POOPED

Meaning:
Exhausted

Origin:
“Englishmen headed for the New World found that violent waves did the most damage when they crashed against the stern (rear end), or
poop
of a vessel. Any ship that came out of a long bout with nature was said to be badly ‘pooped.’ Sailors who described the splintered stern of a ship often confessed that they felt as pooped as their vessel looked. Landsmen borrowed the sea-going expression and put it to use.” (From
Why You Say It
, by Webb Garrison)

Pound for pound, a hummingbird consumes the caloric equivalent 228 milkshakes per day.

PETER’S PRINCIPLES

The Canadian-born writer and educator, Lawrence J. Peter, became famous when his book
The Peter Principle
was published in 1969. The Principle: “Every employee rises to his level of incompetence.” He has more to say, too
.

“A man convinced against his will is not convinced.”

“Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.”

“The red light is always longer than the green light.”

“Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.”

“Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.”

“Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”

“Speak when you are angry and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.”

“Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object.”

“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.”

“The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.”

“There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.”

“The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory.”

“Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.”

“The trouble with resisting temptation is that you may not get another chance.”

“An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.”

“A pessimist is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.”

“Despite the cost of living, it’s still popular.”

U.S. state with highest median income for a family of 4: Connecticut. Lowest: Arkansas.

EXILE ON EASY STREET

It’s a perennial news story: some dictator somewhere is oppressing his people, plundering his country’s treasury, and defying international law. Then suddenly he’s out of power. You assume he’s in jail, but he’s probably living in the lap of luxury
.

D
ICTATOR:
Augusto Pinochet, Chile

REIGN OF TERROR:
Pinochet came to power in a CIA-assisted coup in 1973. During his rule, tens of thousands of Chileans were tortured, killed, or “disappeared.” Pinochet relinquished power amid growing opposition in 1990 but remained the commander-in-chief until 1998, when he became “senator-for-life.”

WHERE’D HE GO?
While visiting England in 1998, Pinochet was arrested by British authorities on charges of torture and genocide. During his house-arrest, he lived at Wentworth, an exclusive estate outside of London. Estimated cost: $10,000 a month. After a long legal battle, a British court ruled that he was too sick to stand trial.

Pinochet went back to Chile, where he was arrested again, with more than 200 charges against him. In 2002 the Chilean Supreme Court ruled him unfit for trial and all charges were dropped. During his house-arrest in Chile, he got the same royal treatment he had in England: he lived on a baronial estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

DICTATOR:
Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay

REIGN OF TERROR:
He took over Paraguay in a military coup in 1954 and ruled for more than 35 years. (He was “reelected” eight times.) Stroessner was a participant in Operation Condor, a police action that tortured, disappeared, or executed hundreds of thousands of people in South America. And he helped turn Paraguay into a haven for Nazi war criminals.

WHERE’D HE GO?
Stroessner was overthrown in 1989 and fled to neighboring Brazil, where he still lives a quiet, comfortable life.

DICTATORS:
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Philippines

REIGN OF TERROR:
Ferdinand Marcos was elected President of the Philippines in 1966. Under the Philippine constitution, he would have had to leave office in 1973—so he declared martial law and scrapped the constitution. Having taken absolute control of the country, Marcos ordered numerous tortures and executions. And he stole more than $5 billion. When he was overthrown in 1986, the 1,220 pairs of shoes found in wife Imelda’s closet infuriated the poverty-stricken nation and became an international symbol of greed.

WHERE’D THEY GO?
To Hawaii. Ferdinand died in 1989, but with billions hidden in Swiss banks, Imelda has continued to live in luxury. (She was reported to have over 3,000 new pairs of shoes by the mid-1990s.) The Philippine government recovered $2 billion of the stolen funds, but Mrs. Marcos is still doing alright—in February 2003, she was seen shopping for diamonds in Italy.

The squirting cucumber can shoot its seeds up to 40 feet.

DICTATOR:
Mengistu Haile Mariam, Ethiopia