Mr. Rogers Takes Breakdancing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

?si=n‑0RQ9D05LhJIcZi

Feb­ru­ary 13th, 1985 shall be remem­bered as a tru­ly beau­ti­ful day in the neigh­bor­hood, for that is the date on which Fred Rogers learned to break­dance (sort of).

In no time at all, 12-year-old instruc­tor Jer­maine Vaughn had Mr. Rogers wav­ing, moon­walk­ing and learn­ing how to press play on a boom box so he could demon­strate some “very fan­cy things” regard­ing the first pil­lar of hip hop. (“I’d nev­er be able to do that,” his pupil says admir­ing­ly, and pre­sum­ably truth­ful­ly.)

The tele­vi­sion icon’s leg­endary sin­cer­i­ty is on dis­play through­out, even in this pirat­ed ver­sion, which swaps out the wimpy orig­i­nal track in favor of NWA’s 1989 “Fuck Tha Police,” a move that would’ve pleased Eddie Mur­phy’s Mr. Robin­son.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Goes to Wash­ing­ton

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will always be Fred Rogers’ tele­vi­sion neigh­bor. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday