If you’re planning a late vacation run before school starts, this might help.
Or warn.
My friend Matt was at Disneyland in California with his wife and daughter when suddenly from around the corner of Cinderella’s house appeared the man himself, Mickey Mouse.
A boy, about 4 and hefty with a baby face and a crewcut, saw Mickey. The boy’s face beamed. Matt is seeing the whole thing, as he reported with this knowing observation:
“It was like this big cartoon caption appeared over the boy’s head that had him saying, ‘I’m going to hug THAT MOUSE!’”
The boy immediately broke free from his mother’s hand. His eyes on Mickey, his arms outstretched, he got a running start that can only be described as substantial and purposeful and, full speed ahead, latched his arms around the famous rodent’s hips — and unintentionally rammed his little crewcut head into a certain place on Mickey, a place where all mice are tender, especially cartoon mice that walk upright on their hind legs.
It buckled my man Mickey Mouse. Buckled him right at his little mouse knees.
“He had to grab ahold of something,” Matt said.
Fortunately, Goofy was walking by.
A discerning Goofy hugged the youngster, then helped Mickey back around the corner and into the shadows, the whole “happily ever after” bit up in the air for a change.
“You can’t get that kind of entertainment just anywhere,” said Matt, a human advertisement for this world of wonder where dogs and rodents can coexist in peace — if it weren’t for the occasional overzealous child.
While the chance to see one of Disney’s big cocky stars get taken down to size is tempting, I wouldn’t go to Disneyland or Disneyworld ever. Good friends of mine are loyalists. Some have been so often, they are Disney Travel Agents. Honestly. It’s a side gig. They can get you from the Magic Kingdom to EPCOT to Typhoon Lagoon before you can say Jiminy Cricket.
Hopefully they’ll get as many trips to Orlando or SoCal as they wish before all the Disney characters are beaten into submission and early retirement by young, well-meaning fanatics, unlearned in anatomy but eager to hug their cartoon heroes.
It’s not easy being a famous rodent.
Beautiful. Have a ball. No worries about me ever being in your way. Not that I COULD go. Due to a certain level of financial embarrassment, I can’t even get to Disney Parish. Disney Town. Not even Disney Street.
But other folks — maybe you? — can and should get out on the road one more time this summer with the fam. You don’t have to spend a bundle. Especially if you have small ones in your brood. Consider the fascination of a simple hotel room.
See it from their point of view.
I can remember a night 30 years ago spent with my main guy Casey, all 4-years-old of him, in a hotel room in Tyler, Texas of all places. You’d have thought we were bunking in FAO Schwarz.
“LOOK,” he said when we walked in. “A BATHROOM!
“JUST WHAT WE NEED!”
His eyes caught the telephone, back when there were such things as landlines.
“LOOK! A TELEPHONE!
“JUST WHAT WE NEED!”
We’d touched only the tip of the hotel iceberg. We also needed the lamps, the TV, the Gideon Bible, the room service menu, and that table with two cheap chairs, each item touched, inspected, and pointed out.
It was like being with a longsuffering archeologist who’d just hit the motherlode.
Take it from me: if you’re really looking for it, entertainment is easy to come by. We jumped from one bed to the other. We took a bath, the novelty being that little bitty bar of soap. We looked out the window. We played hide-and-seek, which takes a little ingenuity once they discover the tiny closet; we took about two hours to explain why the coat hangers were that way.
The room couldn’t hold us. We played with the ice machine, bought a vending machine drink with quarters, froze in the pool, punched the elevator buttons, and called each other from the phones in the lobby.
He actually cried, just a few quiet tears, when we left.
I might have too.
Your basic hotel room. It didn’t have a single big fake mouse, but it had everything we needed.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu