It was some cold winter day in 1981 or 1982… as a three year old I didn’t really have a firm grasp on the calendar yet. I only knew it was after breakfast, and before lunch, and I was in my favorite place- curled up in front of the console television on the couch with my favorite blanket, the beloved “doggie blanket” that, befitting me, prominently featured a cat.
I could hear my mother in the kitchen, talking on the phone as she did most days around that time, and I know she was smoking because the smoke would curl and dance through the beams of sunlight shining through the door lights.
On the gigantic wood cabinet TV set, Channel 2, WGBH out of Boston, flickered with ghosting and static bursts. Boston was quite far away and the signal was weak, but to me that was just how television was because every channel looked like that.
I paid the noise little mind as the familiar strains of Mister Rogers Neighborhood began. I don’t know if it was my favorite program, but it was definitely one of the shows that made me happy, so I was excited. Like most kids my age I enjoyed the virtual visit with this gentle adult who explained the world to me.
When he told me it was OK to have feelings, I listened.
When he told me I was fine just the way I am, I listened.
I trusted him.
He usually shared these messages in songs I’d heard many times, but they had mostly washed over me in terms of meaning. I knew the words, but words don’t necessarily mean anything when you’re too young to understand them. Sometimes, though, they would suddenly snap into focus- and that day they did.
Ironically, Mister Rogers had intended the song to teach children how to deal with strong emotions. It was called “What do you do with the mad that you feel?”, and it was all about what to do when you feel mad or sad. I’d heard it a hundred times, I knew every word.. but that day, when he got to the end of the song
“For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.”
…my three year old brain parsed what he’d said into meaning. I sat up on the couch. Was Mister Rogers informing me that I might someday be a man? I reeled as I tried to integrate this information with what little I understood about the life of adults.
The show continued but I was no longer being carried with it, I was too busy experiencing visceral disgust and disappointment. A man? Like my father?
My father was tall, he was aloof, and he was scary. He had a low booming voice and he smelled funny. He didn’t smell bad, mind you, but to a three year old he smelled.. manly. He had a big nose, and his face scratched when I hugged him. He always wore the most boring clothes. His shirts never had rainbow sleeves, or bright colors, or smurfs on them. He didn’t get to wear a pretty red coat like mom, and he wore ugly shoes and ugly hats. He often seemed to me like a black and white photograph. On top of that, he was a dad, not a mom. I’d always wondered why he’d chosen that, why he’d chosen to be so rough and bland. Was Mister Rogers, this adult I trusted, saying that I was doomed to become like my father? That someday I’d be scratchy and low and bland?
I watched the snow drift curl around in the sun outside the window like the smoke had earlier. I had always assumed I would have the choice, but that was the first moment it occurred to me that no one was going to give me that choice- that I was on a train heading in the wrong direction and I couldn’t get off. I’d never have a pretty red coat of my own. I wouldn’t smell nice. I was going to be scratchy.
I remember my eyes welling with tears as I looked out the window, and, not following the sage advice of the song, I ran to my room and climbed into my toy box where I used to hide from the world. It smelled like masonite and pine blocks. I sobbed and hugged my stuffed basset hound, Baxter.
My mother found me not long after, wondering why I was so upset. I told her. Mister Rogers had informed me I would have to wear ugly coats.
My mother laughed the way she did when I said something she thought was adorable, and it made me angry. She didn’t understand. She hadn’t told me. She just assumed I knew. I distinctly remember thinking about the poem she’d often read me before bed, about girls being made from sugar and boys being made from dog tails. I think in the moment I thought it was possibly literally true- after all, I had no idea about the details of child creation. I’d always thought it meant that if you were good enough, you got to be a girl, and if you were a little shit, you had to be a boy. Adults don’t seem to consider how children might interpret things like that. Mister Rogers did.
“Ugly coats!?” she repeated in a thick accent.
In my mind I pictured how radiantly beautiful my mother was in her red winter coat.
“Yes. And he said I won’t be like you…” I squeaked out, clutching Baxter.
“What do you mean?” she asked, confused.
“A mom.”
She could never know how much meaning those two words had for me. What else is a three year old’s conception of femininity than their mother? I was telling her I’d learned I was destined to become everything in the world that felt wrong to me, but I didn’t have the words.
My mother burst out laughing. “Well of course not honey, you’re a boy!”
She kept talking, but I didn’t really hear her, because she was only confirming what I’d already learned. It didn’t matter if I was perfectly behaved, and tried very hard. The feeling of being wrong was permanent because they’d made me wrong… used dog tails or something when they should have used sugar, probably. They’d cheeped out and now I was going to be wrong forever. No wonder she made me wear ugly shoes.
Mom got upset at me and told me stop being silly and stop crying.
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