Chapter Eleven: Ronald Reagan is Not Dead
September in Florida is hot.
So it was no surprise that as we traversed the EPCOT parking lot in the blinding Florida sun, we started to sweat. What was a surprise was how bright the sun was at 8:40 in the morning.
Although I grew up in Florida and cut my teeth on Ft. Lauderdale’s beaches, I’ve lived in the Northwest for so long now that I’m no longer accustomed to the 10 months of summer they have in Florida. Which is one of the things I now love about our annual trek to Orlando. Living again in air you can feel.
As I sit here on this day in the cool night air of winter, I hearken back to that morning in EPCOT and the first thing I recall is that blessed warm morning sun.
And what it felt like to walk under the Monorail track up to the front of the park and catch my first glimpse of Spaceship Earth as it used to be. As it was again. As it should be.
For a brief moment it was 1982 again.
I first went to EPCOT the year it opened. My Dad took me. For a man who didn’t go any farther than a community college, my Dad loves learning. He loves science and history, engineering, imagination, the space program, music and America.
I’m just an apple at the bottom of that tree.
My Dad’s a ferocious reader with an impressive vocabulary and the most eclectic musical tastes you can imagine. He married Mom at an early age and rather than go away to school, he took a job to support his new family. He went to work for a public utility which paid well, provided solid benefits and gave him job security.
Or so he thought.
A month after I graduated from Alabama my Dad was “downsized.” After paying four years of out of state tuition and room and board for his over-privileged son, my Dad lost his job of twenty two years because he didn’t have the education he just finished giving his son. The irony was so cruel that when he told me what happened, for the first time in my life, I cried for my Dad.
And the next day I drove 45 miles back to Tuscaloosa to the Registrar’s office to order a duplicate diploma. Which I gave my Dad. Not that it could do him any good. But it was the only way at the time I could show him that his sacrifice for me was not in vain. My diploma couldn’t get him his job back, but mailing him his own copy said, “Dad, you’ve taught me to be a man of gratitude. I appreciate the sacrifice you made for me.”
It’s probably a natural tendency for a son to measure himself against his dad. I’ll be 40 in a few weeks. I find myself thinking about what my Dad had done by the time he turned 40. I don’t feel as old as my Dad seemed to me when he was the age I am now. He seemed mature, wise. Settled. I feel exactly none of those things. I swear, in my mind I’m still 21. It’s only when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror that I remember I’m not a kid anymore.
The most grown up I ever feel is not when I’m trying a case, or meeting with a client or even out to dinner with my wife. The most grown up I ever feel is when we’re at Disney World. How’s that for irony?
The first time I felt like a grown up, like a man, wasn’t the day we got married or the day I passed the bar, or even the first time I tried a case on my own. It wasn’t even seeing my daughter born. The first time I felt like an adult was sitting with my daughter at lunch in the All Star Movies Food Court back in 2003. Because I was a dad with his little girl and that’s what dads do: they take their families to Disney World.
My Dad was 39 and I was 14 the first time we went to EPCOT. He was over the moon for the place. We spent two whole days there which is extraordinary when you consider how little there was when EPCOT Center first threw open its doors in 1982. But my Dad and his son are nerds and liked reading and playing with the touch screen computers in Communicore and riding World of Motion multiple times and checking out all of the concept cars in the post show area. It’s hard for me to imagine how many times we rode Listening to the Land and walked so slowly through the World Showcase. My Dad filled a photo album with pictures from that trip. When EPCOT was young. And there was no Dolphin or Tower of Terror lurking over World Showcase.
It would be five years before we returned to EPCOT in 1987. I was interviewing for a position at Disney World and Dad came with me and we went to EPCOT instead of the Magic Kingdom. By then EPCOT Center had grown up considerably and we checked out the Living Seas and Journey into Imagination. The trees were thicker and Communicore, though less new, was still fun.
That was the EPCOT I loved.
And in large measure, it is the EPCOT we discovered again in the last few trips. To be clear, there are still elements which are clunky. As if the name
The Seas With Nemo and Friends wasn’t lame enough, the ride shouts, “It’s Good Enough!” EPCOT’s thematic inconsistencies rival those found in the Studios. As much as I love Soren Lorenson, it barely, juuuuuust barely fits in the Land. And even then, not really.
Innoventions doesn’t capture my imagination the way Communicore did. But more and more, we’re discovering more and more that is interesting and fun. And I’m not 14 anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t be so wowed by technology.
Although my Palm Treo still melts my butter.
If I think about my Dad a lot when I’m in Disney World, and I do, I think about him most when we’re in EPCOT. So when I happen upon a dusty relic like the Universe of Energy or walk past the insanely insipid Journey Into Imagination, or stare up at Spaceship Earth with its obnoxious wand, it felt like someone was peeing on my Dad’s photo album. And I hated myself for hating this park that my Dad loved so much.
Falling in love with EPCOT again was not unlike ordering my Dad a copy of my diploma. It allowed me to have back something I’d lost.
And if that’s a lot for a guy to be thinking about, you’ll understand how long we waited in line to get into EPCOT that day. My mind goes places when there’s nothing to occupy it. But as soon as I could, I got my camera out and took the first of many pictures of Spaceship Earth.
Then we headed towards Soren Lorenson. ZZUB had a plan. A well-considered, well-thought out plan. This was our early in, stay-all-day, EPCOT day. We had two more EPCOT days in our itinerary, but this day had the most specific itinerary.
Once inside the Land, we grabbed Fastpasses for Soarin and then as we went to get in line, we asked for child swap deals. Then ZZUBY and I got in the standby line. ZZUBY was holding my hand as we walked down the ramp towards the clump of people at the back of the line.
“Daddy, can we sit in the front row?”
“I’ll sure ask, sweetie,” I said.
“Good,” she smiled.
I’m not sure why she likes the front row as much as she does, but front row on Soren Lorenson is big to ZZUBY. The line moved along pretty quickly and she only asked me two more times about sitting in the front. As the CM was about to direct us to a hang glider, I asked if we could ride in the first row. She warned we’d have to wait and I said, “no problem, we don’t mind.” She directed us down a ways to wait.
We walked to where she sent us. There were three Cast Members standing, chatting and complaining. For a minute, I thought we’d wandered into the Gap. Without looking at us, Enrique tried to shoe horn us in the last row of the hang glider he was currently filling. I explained that we were waiting for the front row.
“Well, you need to wait
over there then,” he spit at me. And he turned back to his coffee klatch.
The rage which had been building because of the bedspread stain not of our own making, the three visits to the front desk to get it removed, the Roaring Fork CM who couldn’t find a more polite way to tell me they were out of bagels, the boats that stopped running an hour before the park closed and the idiot parking lot cast members who were less bright than the orange cones, finally came to a head.
I’d had enough.
“There’s no need for your rudeness,
Enrique,” I said, reading his name badge. “All we did was ask to sit in a certain row. We didn’t insult you and we haven’t inconvenienced you in any way. And even if we did, there’s a way to speak to a guest,
Enrique. And that wasn’t it. And you know it, too. There is no reason for your tone.”
“I didn’t take a tone,” he tried to say.
“You
did take a tone. It was rude and un-called for,
Enrique. It’s high time you remember we’re guests and without us paying $75 a day to be here, you don’t have a job. Think about that the next time you decide to take a tone with a guest who’s just trying to make his daughter happy.
Enrique.”
And with that, he minced over to a corner to lick his wounds. Their coffee klatch now effectively ruined, the other two CMs went to wherever it was they were supposed to be in the first place.
Not surprisingly, Enrique was more pleasant when it came time to direct us to our row in the Puddy Area. I love Soarin' from start to finish which means I love the Puddy deal almost as much as the ride itself. It cracks me up. Every time. I’m a simple redneck who's easily amused. And yet, I’m not voting for Mike Huckabee. Imagine that. Another stereotype bites the dust.
When Puddy tells the poor-man’s George Costanza he’ll also have to remove “these little beauties,” I fell out laughing. Which made my daughter exasperated, “Daaaaaaaady!”
Once inside the ride, we were directed to our hard-fought-for front row and we settled in. Here we are getting ready for take off.
After our ride, I walked ZZUBY up to the lobby and tagged up with the Mrs. While they went on their ride, Baby Z and I strollered up and walked over to get Test Track Fastpasses. Timed out perfectly. We got our FPs and got back to the Land right as my wife and ZZUBY were coming off Soarin'. My wife said the CM made ZZUBY take off her
Crocs because they might fall.
“They’re Crocs!” I said. “They have a freakin strap.”
“I know,” my wife said, “But she told me she’d have to take them off.”
“We were just on the ride. No one said anything about it to us.”
I’d blame Enrique but I think we all know whose fault this is.
George Bush.
That crafty devil.
From Soarin', we headed over to Living with the Land. If only to see if it would justify drilling in ANWR. Because that's all us red meat eating Republicans really care about.
We were about 2 minutes into the ride when I sniffed out a problem. We couldn’t hear a dadgum thing. The audio was busted. Not like Roger Clemens busted. I mean it wasn't working. Like Hillary's campaign strategy. Worse still, we seemed to be the only people on our boat who noticed. The rest of the people on our boat either had never been to EPCOT before and didn’t know that there should be some audio explanation for what we were watching, or they didn’t speak English and were grateful they weren’t having to listen to more words they couldn’t understand, or a third option I haven’t thought of yet.
So as soon as the ride was over and we pulled back into the loading area, I told a CM about the audio and he allowed us to get on another boat. While we did, I couldn’t help noticing the rest of our former boat mates heading off, seemingly unaware that the ride they just left hadn't been working.
What must they be thinking?
Strange ride. Why did we float past a farm house and then out into a greenhouse?
Why are they growing fruits and vegetables in the air? Don’t they know they need soil to grow food?
Maybe my Mom shouldn’t have smoked when she was pregnant.
The second time through, the audio was working and the ride was more entertaining. I like Living with the Land. It’s vintage EPCOT. Part dark ride, part education. The whole idea of finding new ways to grow things and experimenting with innovative ways to raise crops. It’s the best part of EPCOT; creative approaches to real-world problems. Without the heavy dose of propaganda one finds in the movie shown in the same pavilion. And it's presented in an entertaining way, too.
As we floated along, I pointed things out to my little girl that I thought were cool. The dog on the front porch of the farm house said, “
Hewwo Schpupin’s Famwy.”
I explained to her why the address on the mailbox was #82.
And the melons growing in the air were amazing to look at. I think my favorite is the pumpkin they’re shaping to be a Mickey head. Its earning its ears.
ZZUBY thought that was funny, too. She’s a good bit younger than I was when my Dad was my age. But she seems to like the same kind of stuff I do. She likes the same music and the same movies. She loves her some Alabama football and just recently she told me that she likes Buzz Lightyear, too.
That ZZUBY loves Jesus and loves going to church makes me prouder still.
Recently, I've started to notice how she's grown into a very grateful child. Genuinely grateful.
I had a short business trip last week and as I usually do when I travel, I picked up a prize for her. She got a Leapster for Christmas and a week or two ago, I heard her say she wanted a new game for it. So with some time to kill on my trip, I picked up a new game for her. She was so excited to receive it and thanked me not just with the big hug and kisses all over, but the next day she said, "Daddy, thank you so much for getting me a new game for my Leapster."
Then there's this: my wife had the girls with her in the grocery store the other day. ZZUBY noticed a nearby woman in camos. Clearly she was a soldier. ZZUBY said to my wife, "Mommy, that woman fights for our country!" My wife said, "Yes, she does. Do you want to tell her thank you?" ZZUBY nodded her head and then turned to the woman in camos and said, "Thank you."
That my daughter recognized a soldier, recognized the sacrifice that woman was making on our behalf. And wanted to say thank you. That melts my butter.
I love that my daughter has a heart of gratitude and evidences such Godly character at her tender age. And that she has my sense of humor and laughs with me at hydroponic pumpkins shaped like Mickey Mouse is okay, too.
We didn’t purposefully ride the Land two times in a row. But because we did, it was 1982 again. Only now I’d earned my ears.
___
Click Here For Chapter Twelve:
NODISCOORTHEBEEGEES
.. That would be worth spending a full day at MGM
DH saved all the newspaper info for him to read when we got home last night.
I suppose that it helped that we just happened to be watching the final scene from Pearl Harbor when I read it.
for a great TR!
Though those little pink 
