This is the story of how my lifelong career of making an ass of myself began at a very young age.
When I was six years old, I had a thing for Mickey Mouse. How children keep falling in love with him I’ll never understand. Mickey is a fucking deadbeat. Has he even been in a cartoon since the 1930s? He produced a small body of actual work and then vanished, to appear again only in the form of roughly five billion Imperial tons of merchandise. It’s like if J.D. Salinger had written The Catcher in the Rye and then spent the rest of his life screen-printed on sweatshirts and pointing to the incorrect time around your wrist.
In the spring of 1983, my parents realized I wasn’t quite old enough to be sold into prostitution in Thailand, so they decided instead to tote my brother and me along on our first trip to Walt Disney World. Naturally this was to be the singular epic event in my life, against which no later accomplishments could possibly measure up.
Considering the historic event that was about to unfold, I felt it was only polite to drop a note to Mickey himself and warn him of my impending arrival. So with broad, sweeping flourishes of a trembling crayon, I penned him what I felt was a grand announcement (but was more likely an indistinguishable series of multicolored scribbles) and turned it over to my mother to be mailed to Florida. I thought nothing more of this, until… One day my mother came to me holding aloft an envelope, and announced that I had a letter, and it was from Mickey Mouse.
Oh, it was beyond anything my little malformed mind could have wished for. You see, Mickey had read my letter and decided to RSVP. He was so thrilled to hear that I was coming, he declared. Please have a safe trip, he begged me, and he’d meet me when I got there. He couldn’t wait to see me! Well, that did it. This was destiny.
Finally we made the three-day car trip to Orlando. The very next day ushered us to the Magic Kingdom, where Mickey and I were to be united at last. This was it! We made our rounds through all the rides, most of which I loved, and a few of which I did not (I distinctly remember screaming in terror throughout Space Mountain and also during Snow White, where that goddamn bug-eyed witch popping out from behind the trees scared the ever loving shit out of me). All the while, my fat little noggin spun in Linda Blair-like circles as I kept watch for my round-eared hero. I crossed paths with Goofy, Donald, and even that little sissy-bitch Pluto. But where was Mickey?
Suddenly we spotted a swarming little mob of crazed children, and standing boldly at its center, a six foot tall mouse in red shorts.
I just launched at him. As I burned a straight line through the atmosphere between my parents and Mickey, my shoes and belongings fell away from my body like the stages of a rocket. None of that mattered. Our fateful encounter had arrived.
I slammed into the outer wall of the throng of children who were keeping Mickey and me apart, and struggled to close those last agonizing few feet through a writhing mass of clawing, grubby arms. It was no good! I had to get his attention! I started jumping up and down, waving my arms and shouting, “Mickey! It’s Andy!! I’m here, Mickey!!! Over here Mickey, I’m right here!!!!” as loudly as I could. After a minute the crowd began to disperse, and I was able to wriggle my way inside the circle. There we were at last, face to fuzzy face. “Here I am, Mickey!” I sang, beaming at him through tears of pure joy.
Mickey patted me on the head and walked away.
I stared at his matted furry back as it strolled out of view, frozen with confusion and heartbreak. Had he simply not recognized me? Had he forgotten about his letter altogether? There had to be some kind of mistake. I think I was in shock.
We finished up the Disney trip and I had just about as much fun as any other five year old. But I remained crushed over my failure to make a connection with Mickey.
A couple of years later, my mom and I were at home one day, and my thoughts turned to that disappointing encounter. I turned to her and mentioned casually, “You know, it’s so weird that Mickey wrote me that letter and then all he did was pat me on the head.”
She gawked at me for a few moments, but not just any gawk. We’ve all seen it at least once in our lives. It was the “You just might be stupidest person ever to walk the earth” gawk. After gaping at me in this manner for a few moments she said incredulously, “Andy…I wrote that letter!!!”
I stared back at her for a minute as the full impact of this revelation came crashing down on me like a sandbag. Of course she had written it. The guy in the suit wouldn’t write people letters, and even if he did, why would he have have written one to me? And picturing the letter (which had been framed and stood proudly on my dresser for awhile after) in my mind, I could even now recognize my mother’s handwriting. With this brutal realization driven home by my mom’s gaze of shocked disappointment, humiliation spread across my face like a brush fire. My embarassment was paralyzing and profound. Why had I never questioned this before? I had believed it then and had grown up believing it, and never once until that day had I trained my full reasoning upon that belief. I think very shortly after that was when I realized I didn’t believe in God.
Looking back, I just have to laugh at what a spectacle I must have been through the eyes of a bystander. I think of how completely and naively I fell for that obvious lie, and the fun my parents surely had at my expense. I think of the teacher to whom I proudly showed my correspondence from Mickey – in my mom’s flowing script – declaring it proof that I was his special friend. And most of all, I think of the person sweating away inside that Mickey costume, seeing this crazy brat flailing around shouting “I’m here Mickey! Mickey, I’m right here!!” and thinking, What the fuck are they feeding that kid?
And so I was raised up, let down, and savagely humiliated. I know my mom meant well by writing that letter, but I can’t help thinking the fingerprint left on my psyche by that whole event is a dirty and unhealthy one. For example, I still love going to Disney World, because it never fails to appeal to that naive inner child that I have refused to let go of through the years. But I still have to resist the urge to locate Mickey, run up to him, and pat him forcefully on the head. “How do you like it, you giant cocksucking rodent?!”
