I, on the other hand, don't really have a religion. The closest thing that I have is my relationship to Disney.
(You laugh ... unless you know me.)
Pilgrimages to Orlando and Anaheim, studying the holy texts, shoot, we even have our own apostles!
Think about it, religion provides comfort, peace, a sense of community, moral values ... these are all things I take from Disney.
Plus if you invest in Disney stock, you can make a few bucks, too.
But I'm actually being serious here.
Anyway, growing up I always wanted to work at Walt Disney World and Walt Disney Feature Animation (now Walt Disney Animation Studios), but the closest thing I had was my local Disney Store in the Maine Mall. Eighteen days after my eighteenth birthday I applied for a job there. April 17, 1994. The start of the summer of The Lion King.
(I'm blanking on a religious reference for that. Let's just say the burning bush. No, no, the parting of the Red Sea. Yeah, there were more people at that. Did you ever wonder if the survivors had reunions? What would happen if two survivors ran into each other? "You were at the Red Sea? Dude, so was I! High Five!")
So the Disney Store is my temple.
No matter where I live, no matter what I'm doing, I can stop in to the Maine Mall Disney Store and chat with the manager Beth - Beth who helped me get my first job at Walt Disney World back in 1996. (It's a long drawn out story that involved me being a screwball missing my bus to the interview - and this was in the days before cell phones. Beth, working at a different Disney Store at the time, played the role of messenger and drove to meet my parents at the bus station in New Hampshire to tell them the news.)
Anyway, yesterday I went to the Maine Mall.
The Disney Store gone.
Now, I realize that 98 Disney Stores closed last month - but I never thought that the Maine Mall store would close.
I felt a little like Martin Blank in Grosse Pointe Blank (another Disney movie) when he goes home after ten years and finds an Ultimart convenience store where his house should be.
Not having Dr. Oatman's phone number I called my brother instead.
I know I shouldn't be attached to a store - it's just a store - and I know that my thing with Disney is more than a little odd. But that Disney Store has been such a constant in my life for the last two decades. And now it's gone.
In the cruel irony category, as I was leaving the mall (after a lunch of Taco Bell! Mmmmm!) the Elton John version of the song "The Circle of Life" from The Lion King came on over the PA.
- Some of us fall by the wayside,
And some of us soar to the stars,
And some of us sail through our troubles,
And some have to live with the scars.
There's far too much to take in here,
More to find than can ever be found.
But the sun rolling high through the sapphire sky,
Keeps great and small on the endless round.
The circle of life indeed.
