Joshua Minton's Online Pulpit : Disney World as a Right of Passage: Raising Better Children While Hating Everyone in Line Around You

Legend has it that Charles Bukowski hated Mickey Mouse more than anything and thought it was blasphemy of the highest order that somehow a soulless celluloid corporate intruder started passing itself off as the source and effect of creativity and dreams. Maybe he thought children finally bought off on the finger instead of the moon it was pointing to.

In America today you’re close to abusing your children if you don’t take them for the full Disney World experience. This means all four parks, the water slides, the mickey mouse ice cream bars, the fireworks, the $12 a day parking (current 2009 price), the fast pass planning sessions, the folded up maps covered in sucker spit, the forever passes that guarantee you’ll overbuy on the initial experience and be back for another round someday, and the laughter and smiles that a $130 a day ticket price per person can give you inside a simulated environment at sometimes psychedelic pitch.

But don’t mistake this essay as an anti-capitalist anti-corporate rant against the mouse and friends and those who impose him on us as a right of passage to adulthood in modern day America. The Internet is littered with those kinds of essays and they all have root with Hank Bukowski so go directly to his poetry if you want the raw deal from that angle. This piece has more of a soul searching purpose coming from a father who happens to wield a heavy keyboard and a large magnifying glass into his own heart.

This Disney shit is expensive so let’s get that out of the way first off. My parents had to help us pay for the trip with their time share dollars and they bought some meals, paid for the rental car and dozens of trinkets, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Disney nickels and dimes you to death with every step and you’ll pay for it with more than blisters and a possible heat stroke from the sun rays of the sunshine state. But there is a value you get in exchange for your money. You will learn a lot about yourself.

And you gain perspective through the laughter of your children and this brings me to my final point, the reason for undertaking such an absurd engagement in the first place–your children. Disney World claims to be the place where dreams and wishes come true…for a price. The price isn’t just money although there is certainly that element of cost. And the price isn’t just time–as parents, we plan and scheme for months with books, maps of the park, budgets and reservations. We rent the mini-vans, pay for the overpriced ice cream and hot dogs, and hurry up to wait in stupid lines that no sane person should ever subject their loved ones to.

The true price of a trip to Disney World is the effort you put into it in the moment. This is also the true price of being a supportive member of your family–working with your spouse, your children, and your extended family to support each other in times of need, celebrate each other in times of triumph, and mourn with each other in times of grief.

As parents we are each responsible for shepherding the flame of creativity and passion that our children are born with inside the spirits of their nature. It’s a small, flickering combustion immediately thrust into a dark wind storm and many of these lights blow out before they even get a chance to melt the wax around their wicks. Some babies are tossed over the cliff like animals minutes after they’re born and some suffer far greater tortures that play themselves out slowly over the years so that the candles that once blazed blue become red in an inferno that burns as much of the world as a sociopath can reach in the blood lust of their wailing.

But some of these flames, if sheltered effectively with great care, can leap up to light the darkness enough for the rest of us to be able to build shelters that protect generations. Our job as parents isn’t to raise businesspeople who carve up the resources of the world for the few in their circles of influence. And neither is it our job isn’t to raise soldiers whose greatest gifts are to kill or die trying. And we should definitely not allow our children to become criminal succubi who eat the light and give comfort to darkness. History has always been at the mercy of untethered children whose parents shrugged it off.

The highest calling of parenting is to keep the creative flames of our children alive long enough to connect them with the source of light which ultimately binds us all. This responsibility of shepherding the flame in my children means more to me than all the writing I will ever produce in my lifetime because I believe the very act of pouring hope and sanctity and the freedom to express it into a young mind heals the world around us all for lifetimes ahead.

If a cost of doing that is to buy into the corporate capitalism of a cartoon mouse and a few of his cronies; to pay a fool’s ransom in ticket prices, parking, and deep fried calories; to hold my daughter’s hand while she gets her picture taken with some poor minimum wage schmuck in a fluffy costume; and to wait in lines longer than the the toilet paper meltdowns of soviet Russia–then so be it. As parents, we are in the business of saving the world from its own madness and the bigger the lie, the more children will believe it. The lie is this–Tomorrow will be brighter than today. We should all be praying to be in error about this being a lie and we should each be pouring as much faith and time and love into our children that we can squeeze from this moment right now.

Because in the end, everything could depend on Goofy and this fucking mouse making good on their promise about dreams coming true.

photo credit: deadrobot