If you grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood then I think that you will enjoy this video. It’s really well done and brings back so many memories of watching his show and wondering what he was going to show you next. I always loved it when he showed you how things were made.

Another program that I enjoyed when I was young was Mr. Dressup. I guess that this was a Canadian program because most of my friends have never heard of it. I grew up close to the Canadian border and so that’s the PBS channel that we could get on our TV. I loved Mr. Dressup, his ‘son’ Casey and Casey’s dog, Finnigan. Sure, Casey and Finnigan were puppets, but that didn’t matter to me.

I heard a story the other day that made me sad, and also made me think about Mr. Rogers and Mr. Dressup. This kind of relates to my post from yesterday. An older gentleman was tossed out of a Barnes and Noble after a female customer complained because he was sitting by himself in the childrens’ section talking on his phone. He had been in there shopping for his grandchildren when his phone rang and he had to take the call. Since when has it become illegal for a man to be shopping in the childrens’ section by himself? Yes, there are child molesters out there and bad things can happen, but does that mean we should condemn every single man who shops in the childrens’ section by himself? Would we automatically assume that a woman who was shopping alone in the hunting section of the bookstore was looking for ways to kill somebody? Would she be kicked out of the store? Absolutely not.

I hate to break it to you, but child molesters aren’t found only in bookstores. Does that mean we should look suspiciously on any man who takes an interest in children? Do we look suspiciously on any woman who takes an interest in children? Nope. It’s her maternal instinct, we say. So why should we persecute men? We don’t treat every guy in a bar who buys a woman a drink like he’s a rapist. How do we know that he’s not going to put the date rape drug into her drink? If we kick single men out of the childrens’ section of a bookstore shouldn’t we also kick college-aged males out of bars where college-aged females are socializing? Why do we have the double standards? It all sickens me. It’s not fair, and I don’t know how to fix it, but maybe we shouldn’t automatically judge a person based on what little we know of their circumstances.