It's Such a Good Feeling

There's this neat blog out there all about daily routines. It's really fascinating, collecting stories about lots of different people, mostly writers and artsy types. Recently they had a post about Fred Rogers and this part really struck me:

"The first time I met Mister Rogers, he told me a story of how deeply his simple gestures had been felt, and received. He had just come back from visiting Koko, the gorilla who has learned--or who has been taught--American Sign Language. Koko watches television. Koko watches Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and when Mister Rogers, in his sweater and sneakers, entered the place where she lives, Koko immediately folded him in her long, black arms, as though he were a child, and then... "She took my shoes off, Tom," Mister Rogers said."

When you picture that, do you kind of want to die of literal cute overload? Who can forget Koko and her kitten. And coupled with Mr. Rogers, who was such a deeply powerful wonderful force on our collective unconscious, and was so accessible that even a gorilla recognized his simple act of taking off his shoes and changing into his cardigan sweater. I mean, everything about him is delightfully memorable. I still remember the episode where he went to the crayon factory, and how he used to always feed his fish.

I hope y'all had a great weekend. I saw "Tell No One" on Friday, checked out my bestie's new house yesterday (which I may be moving into), and watched a couple episodes of The Wire Season 5. Can you believe it's already February?! The Mr. Rogers Koko episode was all about kids dealing with new situations or meeting new and different people. Here's to a month of new adventures (hopefully involving monkeys).