#61 Happy Pants

Ducks don’t wear pants. One of the many lessons I’ve learned from Disney over the years. I read this article on Disney’s fiftieth anniversary in a magazine. As kind of a fiftieth anniversary tie-in it listed fifty reasons to love Disney. Get it? Fiftieth? Fifty? I don’t know where they come up with these kooky ideas.
Disney and I have had a love-hate relationship over the years. Probably stems from the time I was ripped out of the grip of my mother’s hand when we were crossing over the bridge from Fantasyland to Frontierland and I spent the next forty minutes being swept around in the tide of the Fourth of July sea of humanity like a baby lion in a wildebeest stampede. I was as scared and confused as Bambi in a forest fire. Being only four years old and having already been exposed to enough Disney movies to associate the very name Disney with losing a parent you can imagine I was scared indeed. It was not a good day for me as I recall. Puking after my older brother got the Mad Hatter’s teacups spinning too quick, getting the one piece of gum in all of Disneyland stuck to the bottom of my new mouse-eared shoes—which incidentally were too big and had raised a Jumbo blister by abandonment time—and then being lost in a huge forest of adult knees. I’m surprised I turned out normal.
So as I’m reading some of the fifty reasons to love Disney I’m a little skeptical. Some are okay. Mainstreet is #1. Thrill rides are #5. But #7 is a little esoteric: “‘An ever-optimistic global spirit’, the park has long urged visitors to imagine a more peaceful planet, a message repeated over and over in ‘it’s a small world’.” That’s that John Lennon song isn’t it? Nah... Excuse my cynicism but “It’s a small world” is chiefly notable for having inserted that insipid song into my brain so deeply that I still can’t get it out. My parents used to force us to go on that eternal ride every summer. Not because they liked it but because it was the longest ride indoors and it had air conditioning. A great relief from the 100-degree southern California sun. The ride and its annoying repetitive song didn’t make me wish for world peace, it made me wish for world peace and quiet.
Reading the article, I got the feeling that even the writer was having a hard time coming up with fifty reasons. Listing as #34, the theme- decorated trash cans, is a bit of a stretch, and as #35, the re-creation of Walt’s pre-Disneyland Burbank office was even more obscure. It was never worth an “A” much less an “E-ticket” (#12 by the way). Reasons #21-27 are the seven dwarfs. That’s padding the list, and then the article only mentions three of them by name. Even the paid hack Disney writer can’t remember all seven. But who cares. As Disney knew, you don’t have to make sense to be happy.
Still, riddle me this. Why is Mickey’s friend Goofy—a dog—able to talk and gets to wear clothes, and Mickey’s friend Pluto—a dog—not able to talk and has to run around naked? And what’s with Snow White and those antique clothes, stark white face, and jet black hair? Is she like the original Goth Chick, or what?
America, ya gotta love it.