Once upon a time, when I was twenty-something and blonde and FAR too cool for IT ALL, I got trapped at MGM Studios during a parade. I was with my bestest Friend, Mrs Repressed - we had stopped for ice cream and wouldn't you know it - a damned parade started up.
It was at the HEIGHT of TOY STORY madness, when it was new and the Disney Parks were RESOUNDING with Buzz and Woody fever.
Disney parades, sans children, are some form of hell. You can't see and you get blocked in - if you aren't in the right spot you can't get from Point A to Point B so you had just better grab a seat and get comfy. You aren't going ANYWHERE till the Disney Police take down the barricades.
So there we sat, she and I, in the blistering Florida sun, eating our ice cream and watching some of the brattiest kids on the face of the Earth throwing various tantrums. We watched couples have fights (man some of the WORST FIGHTS ever take place at Disney) and we generally glared at the parade route willing it to JUST BE OVER.
To add to our hell, the freaking music was BLARING right near us. It was a lovely compilation of "Strange things are happening to me" or whatever it's called and "You've Got a Friend in Me." Sort of a medley, if you will.
It blasted and blared the same short set of bars that had been cobbled together to FORM this medley over and over and over until by the time the parade was over....we were nearly giddy from madness.
Going on our way, we both raged our annoyance and laughed, sarcastically singing the refrain from hell we'd been subjected to. "You've GOT A FRIEND IN MEEEEEEEEEEEE. YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND IN MEEEEEEEEEEEE." Sort of like that. With twenty-something sarcasm to spare.
But times change. Best friends meet boys, get married and move away. Babies come, more babies come and lives are altered by the movement of the calendar. I was never more aware of that when I was awakened to the tinkling music box melody of "You've Got a Friend In Me" coming from my children's room this morning.
I crept to the doorway, bed headed and in sweaty pajamas, and peeked in quietly, so as not to disturb what was going on.
There, standing alone by the toy box, a little blonde 5 year old boy had propped up a music box toy and was playing himself that song. He swayed and danced a little, quietly listening to the music.
And I was a little sorry that I had ever been so callous and uncaring.
It's amazing how little things mean, when you have no little things of your own - isn't it?
2 comments:
I think about that day everytime I hear that song. It's still funny to me that we were SO annoyed by that parade, but now I get it. That song is still annoying when you have to hear it 18 times in a row at full blast, but I now get why parents were pushing and shoving to get their kids in position for the parade to pass by. In a few short years, we'll go back to being annoyed by parades like that, and that's the way of the world. I'll still think about that day in our twenties when we thought we'd have to highjack Woody and beat the crap out of Buzz to get them to stop the madness!!! Good Times.
As a former resident of Orlando I understand the Hell that is a Disney parade.
I also get what you mean about the kids.
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