Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood Catches Up With the Times

Mr. Rogers has a lot of admirers but I never was one of them. Whenever I saw him on TV saying "Would you be my neighbor? Would you be my neighbor?" I wanted to say, "No, I won't be your neighbor, you twerp. Get off my TV screen."

It was a real issue for me.

Well, last night I had a dream. I dreamed I was in what for me, at least, was the worst place in the world I could be in. I dreamed I was in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.

In the dream Mr. Rogers' neighborhood has been taken over by a 1920s Chicago gang who used to call themselves the Risky Night Riders. Now as far as I know, the Risky Night Riders may have been great guys. But they were not the kind of guys you usually think of when you think of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The cartoon characters all cleared out. They left for the suburbs or another country or something. But Mr. Rogers was upside down on his mortgage, so he had to stick around.

So there is this one Risky Night Rider. This guy must live in the gym. He is 500 pounds of solid muscle. His muscles are so big the Democrats have asked him to run for governor of California. Nobody else has muscles big enough to run against Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Then Mr. Rogers walks up. You know how tiny Mr. Rogers is. And he walks up to this this 500 pound guy, and he says in that little tiny voice of his, "Would you be my neighbor?" And the Night Rider guy says, "I AM YOUR NEIGHBOR, YOU IDIOT."

Now that's what I call a good night's sleep.