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THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
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THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Posted by
PEGASUS
(VIP) 16 Mar 2005 12:15pm
I thought this was nice! Lesson to be learned here. 
There are always traits in young children that cause their parents to be concerned, and this boy was no exception. However, it wasn’t objectionable behavior that had Jim and Nancy concerned; it was their young child’s shyness. There was just no doubt that he was a gifted nine-year-old boy. He was doing so well at the piano that he seemed actually to enjoy his daily practice sessions. Perhaps it was because there was a real gift in those hands as they sweetly tickled the keys of the family upright. Or perhaps it was the fact that during those hours spent at the piano the boy could enjoy his solitude. Still, the behavior that troubled his parents most was the fact that their son was terribly shy.
At the piano, yes, at the piano, the lad could release his shyness and bottled-up emotions and allow them to flow out in the form of beautiful music. Many years later a close friend would state that this young man was never as comfortable anywhere as he was sitting at the piano. His loving mother didn’t quite know how to handle her soft-spoken son. But she loved him and encouraged him. And each evening she would pray softly for him while knitting in the family room of their Pennsylvania home.
As the years passed, he determined to seek out a quality education to match the great gift he possessed. He enrolled at one college and then transferred to another to major in--what else? --music. Collegiate friends recalled him as being more talented upon arrival than anyone else in the music department.
He would graduate with a double major and highest honor. Marriage would follow and eventually two beautiful sons. But the thought of being a concert pianist always made him feel uncomfortable: too many eyes staring at him, making him the center of the attention that he avoided whenever possible. Instead of being the seeker of the limelight, this sensitive, godly young man was always more content behind the scenes.
If only there were some way to use his unlimited ability at the keyboard without needing to be in the spotlight.
Then it happened. His imagination became captured by, of all things, television. This quiet and unobtrusive young man determined that he wanted to do television and to do it better than it had ever been done. He moved to New York and began in the television industry by delivering coffee to actors and stage hands on the set.
In time his talent and creativity would emerge, and he landed his first on-camera role at the tender age of 26. But there again he was confronted with his basic unsettled feelings about being in the public eye. No, this masterful man with the shy personality wanted to use the medium of television to reach out to the other shy children whose closest friend might be their own television set. So he created a daily show that sought to communicate love and significance to the withdrawn, but valuable, children of America. To accomplish that lofty goal would involve his doing something that was no sacrifice at all. He would move behind the scenes and touch his audience through puppets.
Now you probably know of this man’s ability to entertain children of all ages with his masterful creations like X the Owl, Henrietta Pussycat, and even his alter ego, Daniel Striped Tiger. You may know that he personally wrote more than 200 songs used on the show. You may even know that his famous cardigan sweater was a silent tribute to his mother who made him a new one annually, or that when he taped his final show more than 300 PBS stations nationwide aired it.
What you may not know is that the consummate children’s advocate who walked away from the limelight of being a concert pianist, and into the career that would leave him at the pinnacle of his field, was the same shy boy that his parents worried about at the age of nine. Fred Rogers.
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