My husband and I are in a race against time to shove all things Disney down our kid's throat.
This runs counter to the advice in the parenting books. Don't do that, they all say, in or near chapter 1. And our inner voices advise us to stop, too. But we're not listening to that drivel.
Here's why: We are headed to Disney World in a matter of days, and we are not going to have our two year old's first trip to the Magic Kingdom suck because she doesn't have a clue who Mickey and Minnie are, and doesn't know jack about Cinderella. Or Sleeping Beauty. Or Buzz Lightyear.
So by god, she's learning about it all now. And how. With a vengeance. To the exclusion of all else. ABCs? Colors? How to brush one's teeth? Please and thank you? Step away from those things, little girl -- there's time for them later. For now, come sit and we'll focus again on Peter Pan's relationship to Tinker Bell, then we'll sing "It's a Small World (After All)," followed by a discussion of the tiki birds.
Because hey, there's us to think of, too. The parents. Spending all that money in these economic times ($75 per day per adult, oh my god), we can't live with the possibility of our child thinking we've merely hauled her to a particularly large and humid park filled with people loping around dressed as stuffed animals. If she gets a bored look or says anything akin to, "Yeah, but can we go back to the hotel now?" we will simply not be able to bear it. We just aren't strong hearted enough.
Thus, the force feeding began about two months ago. We started by purchasing a Mickey Mouse plate and cutlery for little Eve, then pulling up Mickey Mouse videos on YouTube and making her watch them while she ate. Then we'd quiz her about who is who. She especially liked the one from the 1930s that featured Mickey and Donald Duck getting evicted from their apartment by the abusive and beefy Sheriff Pete. So did we. A little real life there.
Next, I pestered friends to loan us their copies of "Cinderella," "The Little Mermaid," "Pocahantas," and whatever else old Walt made, and I kept these questionable morality tales running on a continuous loop in our living room, filling the joint with talking fish, reasoning livestock and maudlin songs of animated-lady longing.
One pal who totally gets it became our dealer, sending us home after each play date with more and more Disney crap. Videos, books, toys -- shoving them into my bags and hands like a pusher. The last time we went over there we came home with three Cinderella dresses. Eve put them on, leaped about, dancing, shrieking talking about "the party" (translation: the ball). I couldn't have been happier if this neighbor pal had given me cold, hard cash, and lots of it.
A few weeks into all this, my mom, who lives not too far from Disney World, declared, "I'm going to give Eve the new Pinocchio video when she gets down here," to which I blanched, and yelped: "No, mom - please, we need it now!"
It arrived a day or two later. Obviously, Mom gets it too, having dragged me and my four older siblings to Disney an awful lot back in the day. Though, it probably cost $10 a head back then so she may not have been as feverish about the prep. But still.
Eve, picking up my spastic vibrations and being a natural-born contrarian, will often say: "I want to watch 'Shrek,'" to which I counter, "None of that DreamWorks garbage. How about 'The Disney Princesses Sing-a-long'?"
"No," she says, "'Charlotte's Web.'" To which I say, "'Mulan' it is!"
And so it has gone. The poor child.
The Disney Store these days? Eve has free reign in there. Well, sort of. Freer reign than normal, which is to say anytime we get near it she can pick one thing. Ok, two. Last time it was a Minnie Mouse nightgown and a collapsible Winnie the Pooh brush. Good, I thought, let it seep into her skin via jammies and instruments of hygiene.
"Old MacDonald had a farm... and on the farm he had some ghosts," she sang the other day in the car, appropos of nothing. Instead of dismissing it as a typical little-kid non sequitur, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to begin a discussion of the Haunted Mansion, its mysteriously sinking parlor with baritone narrator, its overly emphatic crystal ball lady, its lower-level dining room jammed with flitting specters, the ghosts that sit on you flirtatiously at the end.
"What?" was all she said.
Well, it's a start, I thought.
Just before we left for Florida, though, our proudest moment: We couldn't find Eve for a few minutes. We stuck our head in room after room, and finally located her in our darkened bedroom staring up at the Disney Channel as Mickey Mouse flounced about singing some song about hot dogs. "Look!" she said, pointing, "Mickey!" She was entranced. And we were teary. With relief.
There it was: our mission, nearly accomplished. And just in time. Walt would have been proud.