Disney Adventure Day Eight: So the Weight and Dyer families are chirpily packing for a seven hour splash fest at Typhoon Lagoon, one of Disney’s two water park.
“Hey Mom!!!! Awesome!!! Cool!!! That airplane is writing something in the sky!” Jack shrieks, pointing toward Heaven.
Andrew, who’s won his class’s AR reading award the past three years and therefore feels it necessary to be our family’s designated reader, takes over as if he’s Indiana Jones translating ancient Farsi. “June 4th is GA….June 4th is Georgia!!! They’re talking to us! Wait, it’s writing more. June 4th is GAY. What?”
All of us “What???”
Our jaws drop in unison like horrified synchronized swimmers. “June 4th is GAY DAY at all Disney Parks.”
A five year old’s tap on my elbow leads to the inevitable. “Mom, what’s GAY DAY?”
“Oh, where’s your father when I need a complex and world view changing concept explained,” I whine.
“Maybe they mean GAY like Justin Beiber is gay. It means really LAME, Jack. Today, Disney welcomes lame, dorky people who we have to be tolerant of,” explains a scholarly, yet sorely off-the-mark Andrew.
Meanwhile Trevor and Colin, the other two impressionable eleyementary schoolers in our party are satisfied to pick out cloud shapes in the sky writing’s dissipation, not tuning in at all to my stammering attempt at an explanation.
“So, guys, ya know when we go to Camp Lair and there’s that family that has two mommies…but they both look sort of like daddies and are really, really good softball players?”...I begin.
“The ones who wear their wallets chained to their pants and have Billy Ray Cyrus hairdos?” asks Andrew.
“Yep, those are the ones, Cheryl and Sharon. They’re gay. And proud of it. The license plate on their Subaru Outback says so.”
“Gay means that girls want to date other girls instead of guys. And boys, well, they like boys instead of girls.” There! I said it…in a nutshell, mentally brushing my hands from the awkwardness of the situation. No need to go into politics and sexual positioning with them. Keep it simple!
“We’re not gay and don’t agree with being gay, but we accept those who are for being themselves. In fact, your great uncle Wayne was gay and I loved him dearly,” I tack on for extra points from the sensitivity police.
"Honey, everyone knows that there are no gay people named Wayne," points out my husband, helpful as always, just arriving on the scene.
In typical kid fashion, Andrew and Jack have now dismissed the million dollar question choosing to join their friends in identifying cartoon characters in the cumulus formations above. But then Andrew, always the astute one, looks up and says “Mom, Disney has an entire day set aside for gay people? They won’t let us in if we’re not gay? If they do let us in, do we really want to go?”
Funny how it can take a ten-year-old to point out the elephant in the room that up to this point I’ve completely overlooked. Even if our Disney days are numbered do we really want to go to the water park on a day that will probably feel like a Melissa Ethridge/Indigo Girls concert? Well, do we?
This is where my friend Donna, the other mom, (a happily married heterosexual, I’ll point out) says, “We’re already packed. We have our suits on. I say we get in the car and go. We can always leave if it’s too….uh…too…different for us.”
“Why can’t they have a day to celebrate White Anglo Saxon Protestant Males Who Pay Their Taxes On Time, DAMMIT!!!” My husband, James mutters while buckling his seatbelt. “I’d rather be strung up and beaten than go to this Queen Fest!" (note to my friend Grant who derides me for using occasional profanity...the "dammit" was a direct quote from James)
So, this is where I leave off. I’m getting in the car now and heading off to June 4th GAY day at the Happiest Place on Earth’s Typhoon Lagoon Water Park. Being Disney, it should less x-rated than San Francisco's gay pride parade.
3 comments:
I have friends (a lovely young heterosexual married couple) who go each year at this time and love it.....because it is supposedly far less crowded! But, they don't have kids with them....you might still have more explaining?
Bhahahahaa. That is all.
tell your husband EVERYDAY is WASP day. Get over yourself. I can't wait until you meet Jesus and he asks, what part of love one another did you not understand?
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