His elders advised him to meet bullying with indifference: “The advice I got from the grown-ups was, ‘Just let on you don’t care, then nobody will bother you.’”36 But he did care; more than anything in the world, Fred Rogers cared. It was caring that defined the character of his mother, and it was caring that increasingly influenced the evolving character of this shy but resolute young boy. Fred never accepted the advice that pretending not to care would alleviate his loneliness and pain.
