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...in which we learn that things can, in fact, suck even more...

So as I was saying, I have some latent, apparently-not-repressed-enough Disneyland trauma. But, in a spirit of goodwill that temporarily overcame me during a weak moment, I nonetheless agreed to take an out-of-town friend to Disneyland. (You never take in-town friends to Disneyland because you’ll have to see them everyday afterwards and know how badly you have damaged their psyches. Or maybe I am just projecting.)

It should be noted that this friend is a poster child for ADD. I can always tell when his plane has arrived at the airport because of all the people falling to their knees and thanking Jesus on the jetway. For some reason, this phenomenon, although I have often noted it, failed to translate to the idea that going to Disneyland with him was A Bad Idea.

Here’s something about Disneyland that you may not know. Disneyland sponsors various “_____ Days”, where they offer discounts to certain groups of people. (Hence, the horror stories about busloads of Baptists inadvertently arriving on Gay Pride Day, etc.) Now, seeing as how the only “group” that I could possibly ascribe myself to would be the Group of Total Apathy, I didn’t check to see if the day we went was any special Day.

How could I have even guessed at the possibility of High-School Marching Band Day?

But it was. High School Marching Band Day. There were miles and miles of gold braiding and epaulets and brass buttons. (But no furry hats, thank god – perhaps it was the heat.) There were young, fresh-faced, wholesome high school (GEEKS GEEKS GEEKS) students everywhere, walking perfectly in-step. They had bright shiny eyes like chipmunks and an eerie forced camaraderie. Their toothy identical smiles should have been a grim foreshadowing of what was to come. But, no, I was far too busy collapsing in the throes of flashbacks to my own too - geeky - for - even - marching - band days to pay the least bit of attention to the “Obvious Foreshadowing Here” sign that was flashing over their heads in six-foot-high letters of flame. (Or, that could have been just the sun on all that gold braid.)

My friend, who finds himself far more amusing than he actually is, starts going up to these happy smiling people and unbuttoning their epaulets. Now, most of them do not, in fact, unbutton. So he then begins to demand of every Marching Band Member that we meet (and damn! there are a lot of them...), “Why don’t your epaulets un-epaulet? Huh?! You got on fake epaulets! Faker! Big phony faker-faker!” I try to explain that “epaulet” is not a verb as I hustle him… well, I try to hustle him away, but there’s nowhere to go. The Marching Bands are closing in on us from all sides. I spot a Marching-Band-Free space and dart into it, pulling my friend after me.

And I discover, to my cowering horror, that we are in line for “It’s a Small World”. And that we can’t get out. There are Marching Bands everywhere, prowling like sharks off the coast of the land of tuna. There is only one thing to do. I scrabble around desperately in the bottom of my purse, and finally find It. My For Emergencies Only kit.

By the time my friend somehow gets into a brawl with the family in front of us and gets tossed out of the park, I am already in that pleasant zone where everyone is my friend. I smile benignly at the family. I smile benignly at the Marching Band. I smile benignly at the nice young man who shoves me onto a bench in the front of a boat. I smile at my fellow passengers, the water, the floor. And then the boat starts. But I still smile, peaceful and benevolent. And then… the  boat stops.

It stops right underneath the part that's supposed to be the Swiss Alps or something and there are these goats with heads that bob up and down and these dolls with mouths that snap open and shut and you can't see it but you know that they have these horrible TEETH and are going to come and eat you at any moment and that freakin’ song is playing over and over and for some reason you think of a parrot and the goats are laughing at you...

Disneyland doesn't like it when you get out of the boats on that ride. They like it even less when you go splashing back along the side of the boat attempting to convince everyone else on the boat to make a run for it since the evil dolls are going to eat everyone, assisted by their evil goats with parrots riding on their backs... It's amazing how quickly these big guys in business suits with wires coming out of their ears can materialize in those rides. They just come out of nowhere, striding out from between the Swiss Alps and bobbing goat heads to grab you and haul you off, and put you in a room and tell you that they are not going to call the police but that are banned from Disneyland for life and if you ever come back they will have you arrested.

I have been back since. But I must admit that I never use my credit card when I am there, because in some deep part of me I'm scared that it will set off some alarm somewhere and bring the wire-ear guys back. And possibly a parrot.