Tag Archives: tv

“The number 143 means ‘I love you.’”

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While we’re talking about uber-nice people, let’s take a minute to fondly remember all those quiet moments we spent in front of the tube as children (or even adults) watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

And, courtesy of Mental Floss (via CNN, of all places), a list of “15 reasons Mr. Rogers was best neighbor ever.”

This particularly blew my mind:

In covering Rogers’ daily routine (waking up at 5 a.m.; praying for a few hours for all of his friends and family; studying; writing, making calls and reaching out to every fan who took the time to write him; going for a morning swim; getting on a scale; then really starting his day), writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life.

He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t eat the flesh of any animals, and was extremely disciplined in his daily routine. And while I’m not sure if any of that was because he’d mostly grown up a chubby, single child, Junod points out that Rogers found beauty in the number 143.

According to the piece, Rogers came “to see that number as a gift… because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three.”

Fred Rogers is like a god in our house.