Not a Mickey Mouse House

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What is something you wish you got to experience as a child?

One thing I wish I could have experienced as a child would’ve been going to Disney World.

Growing up, my family really wasn’t a “Disney household“ or even a “Muppet household“ so when I hear people wax nostalgic about old school, Disney movies, TV shows or most Muppet related stuff, I just don’t have the same nostalgic connection to it.

Not a mouse in this house

The same could be said for Disney. I do remember going to the theater when I was five and watching Pinocchio. Beyond that, I didn’t really grow up on old Mickey Mouse cartoons, or things of that sort. In fact, I think I was nine years old when I first heard that There was a Disney Channel coming to my local cable TV provider. In fact, I think the cable guy actually referred to it as “the Mickey Mouse channel“ at the time.

Of course, one argument I have always made about Disney is it they really are not good at marketing their products to boys. Sure, they have the market cornered on Disney princesses. But do you ever notice that Disney animated movies don’t really appeal much to young boys? There’s no brand push for a “Disney princes”.

I’ll even go further as to argue that the entire reason Disney bought Marvel comics, and Lucasfilm is because they completely lack the ability to appeal to boys. They couldn’t come up with anything that boys would like, so they just bought some extremely popular IP’s.

Don’t get me wrong, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate the Muppets. And I think that had I grown-up on them. I would probably put them on some pop culture pedestal now. I don’t have that connection as a child, it’s just not there.

Of course, the real ironic thing for me is that when I did used to watch Sesame Street as a kid, I only watched the animated skits and the skits involving Muppets. I would just change the channel during any of the live action segments.

Even though I grew up in non- Mickey Mouse house, I still knew about Disney World and Disneyland. As a kid, it seemed like a trip to either theme park was something that every American was expected to deal with their lifetimes True story: actually had a discussion with my students about this one time while I was teaching The Canterbury Tales. They were really the first ones who had voiced the idea of a trip to a Disney theme park being the closest thing we have in America to a pilgrimage.

Maybe that’s the reason why we never made the trip to Florida when I was a kid. I’m sure the part of it had to do with the fact that my parents probably couldn’t afford it. After all, we were living on a cop salary. This is not to say that my family was poor that we ever went without. We got probably 90% of the stuff that we ever asked for. They were just some things that were either just out of reach or not very wise way to spend money.

I think that if I had gone to Disney World as a kid, it probably would’ve sparked something in me. It probably would’ve made me a bigger fan of the various Disney IPs of the era. But the truth is, it’s just hard for me to imagine having done that, knowing my family and my upbringing as I do.

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