Maybe I was Raised by a Memoirs Teacher

When I was young, maybe around the age of 8, sometimes the opportunity would arise when I got to spend the night at my grandma's house. I would slip on one of her silky pink night gowns and sleep in my uncle's old bedroom. My grandmother's room was on the other side of the house. She would shuffle to bed and I would listen to the distinctive sound of her slippers and her walker down the long hallway from my bed. Often I would fall right asleep, but if I could will myself to stay up or if I woke up in the middle of the night I would sneak to the kitchen/living room area because that is where the TV was, and Grandma had cable. I would turn on the Disney channel and they would play these old black and white movies about Disneyland, that were essentially Walt Disney advertising how great Disneyland was going into all the details of the rides and the new technology. I was obsessed with these and would try really hard the next morning not to talk about them nonstop with my mother, who I pretended thought that I had gone to bed at a reasonable hour. After I figured out that she and my grandma had actually been to Disneyland when all of these rides existed blew my mind. The House of the Future was my favorite idea, but there were many I could not fathom. A few years ago at the 50th year celebration at Disneyland I made my mom wander with me into every giftstore that talked about Disney history searching for copies of these film clips that I had only faint sleepy childhood memories of. I would have thought I had made them up entirely if not for one 10 minute clip on the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD special features. Walt did a great job of selling his idea to children, too bad I was 20-40 years too late for most of the rides he talked about. To this day I still find myself getting a little too interested in old Disneyland rides and the history of the park. At night they would also play the Mickey Mouse Club which I knew my mom adored as a child, but I always wound up angry because of a story she had told me about her skirt being the wrong color, so I did not find the charm and attachment to the black and white like I did for Disneyland.

Tonight, I found "The DIsneyland Story" and I made an audible sound of excitement.


I promise I will blog about Copenhagen and my travels at some point, but right now I am drinking hot chocolate and reliving my midnight excitement. It is not as thrilling without turning the volume down every few minutes in the fear of being caught, but it is still enjoyable and I can feel her amusement and a little bit of a stern lecture coming my way. Looking back on it, she probably knew the entire time.