By Colin D.

Daniel Tiger, the animal puppet from the hit TV show Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, is a celebrity in the preschool character world, and one of my favorite TV characters ever. Given his popularity, he was later given a TV show called Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, which was one of my favorite shows as a little kid. When I watched this show it gave me a break from the outside world, but not only that, it taught me that I should learn from my mistakes and find out who I wanted to be by experiencing scary things that most of the time I don’t like.

But once, when Daniel said I should experience things, I took it the wrong way. 

One time at a Target when I was five, I was with my stepmom Amanda. When I asked for a Limited Edition Ninjago Lego pack (which was all the hype when I was five) near the register, she said no obviously. But I persevered because Daniel said persevering is good. So I snuck the Lego pack underneath the sweatpants she was buying for my Dad and we went through checkout, went out the doors and I was in the clear. But after we got in the car, I dropped the Lego pack and Amanda saw it. 

She gave me this sort of half sad, half angry face like I had just smuggled the crown jewels. After a stern talking to about how stealing is bad and how it’s going to land me five years in jail, we went back into the store, returned the Lego pack, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a police car pulling up. I mean yes, I did something wrong, yes, it was unacceptable, but the cops!? Why would she call the cops on me? The cops basically gave me the same look as Amanda did, but it just seemed worse. I mean cops kind of need to have a harder expression than a stepmom, because their whole job is telling people what they can’t do and if they can do something, how they can do it without breaking the law. It seemed as if everyone in that Target was looking down at me, especially the adults. As a five-year-old I thought I was actually going to go to jail for five years. Of course I didn’t actually go to jail (if I had I probably wouldn’t be writing this memoir), but this is absolutely an absurd way to show a five year old that stealing is bad. If Daniel Tiger’s Mom called the police on Daniel, PBS would cancel the show and probably apologize to America for showing this on TV. After our talk I started crying because one, I didn’t get my Lego pack and two, I didn’t understand what I had done to deserve this.

After that I went home, ate dinner, went to sleep, woke up and watched Daniel Tiger. This experience taught me a lot about crime, but also about parenting. The big takeaway from this is that yes, calling the cops on a five-year-old is crazy, and also it teaches that you should never steal lego packs from Target, but also that fear and shame aren’t the best way to teach a kid a lesson.