Mark’s Musings – December 11, 2019

Mark Fortune

Here we are. Another week closer to Christmas – and another week closer to “that” movie. Hopefully you are making preparations for Christmas, have purchased some gifts and making sure that you are on the “nice” list. Everyone seems to be saying the same thing – Christmas is close. Yes, that is correct. With Thanksgiving being as late as it can be – the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a bit shorter than usual. Plan for it and prepare for it. We are two weeks away.

The Buckeyes lackluster first half in the conference championship game against Wisconsin has put them in the Fiesta Bowl – which is typically a positive thing for the scarlet and gray – with Clemson as the opponent on Dec. 28. For those that are wondering, there are 39 post season games – with 78 of the FBS teams making the cut to a bowl game. There are 130 FBS teams. That is a lot of bowl games.

The oddest bowl game – the Gasparilla bowl – the coolest bowl game – the First Responder bowl.

Let’s talk about something a bit more serious. The spouse and I went to see the Mr. Rogers movie over the weekend – at first it was more about seeing how the venerable Tom Hanks played the role of a person that most folks have heard of and millions have enjoyed watching on television. As you would expect, Tom Hanks knocked it out of the park.

But here’s the importance of the movie. When we take a look at the world today – we could use a lot more of Mr. Rogers. We could use another Mr. Rogers so to speak.

I would go so far as to say that using older episodes of Mr. Rogers in the younger grades of school could go a long ways to alleviate the bullying and problems that younger people have dealing with many of today’s issues and situations.

In fact, it is difficult to watch the movie and wonder what happened – when and where did we start having to put anti-bullying on the school agenda? Why has this become such a hot topic? Mr. Rogers helped young people understand their feelings, and how to deal with them in a positive manner. If you do some research on the man himself you will find out that he dealt with anger his entire adult life. His way of dealing with that, at least as portrayed in the movie was by banging the low note keys on a piano. Now, I am most certainly not a pianist – but that is hammering the “A” notes – the keys that are on the far left of a piano keyboard. I did enjoy that as a youngster – more to annoy people than anything else. I don’t remember where I did it though.

Young people need healthy ways to deal with their feelings of self-doubt, anger and frustrations. (Maybe we adults do too sometimes?) For the youngsters, this could be athletics, band, choir, or a combination of all of these.

These are only my perspectives of course. You may see it differently and have a totally different viewpoint after seeing the movie. But to sum it up, I sat there thinking that if we could all be more like Fred Rogers the world would indeed be a better place.

Category: Mark's Musings, Opinion