For some of us students, the death of Fred Rogers was welcomed with an ironic grin and a sigh of relief. What a way to treat that effeminate man who helped us grow up. Mr. Rogers was the icon we looked up to every morning during breakfast to get our day started. He was the one who welcomed us to his neighborhood and wore a tie and sweater as casual wear. We were in fact special, each and every one of us, as Mr. Rogers so graciously reiterated day in and day out. He was a surrogate grandfather for some of us who didn't have parents around to raise us. And then we grew up, or some of us did at least. But for all our endless frustrations and "fuck yous" he was there to greet us with a broad sincere smile, just asking us to be his neighbor. Frankly, no matter how hard we try we can never be as punk as Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers was the ultimate paradox, he deeply understood the concerns of the child, but was more respectful and mature than most adults.

Rogers had the courage to spend an entire lifetime speaking to children about some of the most complex and scary issues of life, something most adults couldn't do without wetting themselves. Not an easy task if you ask me. He made an exhaustive career dealing with the line between fantasy and reality. The lesson we all learned from Mr. Rogers was how to grow up to be a considerate adult without loosing the feeling of being a child.

Last week's Time magazine ran a surprisingly loving memory to Rogers. In a way this article is an echo of that publication, minus the overt war overtones. What the article noted about Rogers' program, though, which the smart-assed college kid in all of us should keep in mind, was "that for all the beautiful days in the neighborhood, it was also the darkest work of popular culture for preschoolers ... " Consider the obvious and unnerving distinction between Rogers' small, situated living room and the scary unknown of the intimidating outside world, something that could be viewed with the alleviating care of Rogers' guidance on say ... an outing to a peanut butter factory. Rogers' show was an existential battleground that attempted to define and assuage concepts of fear, self, death and our relations with others.

Maybe all of us who grew up with the loving care of Fred Rogers can reminisce of our time in that goofy, oddly sterile setting of Rogers' house and welcome everyone else to come into our neighborhood. All I know is that the strange alcove occupied by King Friday in Make-Believe Land will forever mystify me. (Appropriately enough the King and his wife, Queen Saturday, were the anti-Punch and Judy; don't want to scare kids more than they already are when Mommy and Daddy are not living together anymore.)

And one of the oddest things about the whole event is that it probably doesn't have a immediate impact upon us who grew up watching Rogers' program. Rather it is our parents who are strangely and deeply affected by the event.

Another odd and deeply tragic effect of Rogers' existence is that in twenty years how we will describe Mr. Rogers to subsequent generations of children. Our memories will be -- or perhaps already are -- as nebulous and incongruous as the black-and-white children's shows of yesteryear we hear our parents mull over.

This year's Rose Parade offered an all-too-late ode to Rogers, as he was co-Grand Marshall of the parade along with another underappreciated sweater-clad icon, Bill Cosby. This is just another of the numerous insults Rogers had to endure through the years, as popular culture has unfairly memorialized him as a dull, dawdling, obsessive-compulsive pseudo-pedophile.

Hopefully what some of us can take away from the tragedy of Mr. Rogers' death is that in our uniqueness we still have the empowerment of a child, the limitless energy to learn, accept, deal with and understand from the world. Few of us could ever aspire to do what Rogers has done -- to spend a lifetime speaking to and encouraging children. His was one of the last pure and stationary programs on television. Never in his lifetime did he do anything to disprove himself as a true and timeless philanthropist.