The Moth Podcast: We're Going To Disney World!
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There's an African proverb that says that until the lion learns to write, the hunter will be glorified in every story. And in that moment,

I had become the lion that could write. Hear stories like that and more from your local community at the Moth Grand Slam in D.C. on Monday, November 18th at Lincoln Theater. Ten champions from our story open mics will share hilarious and high-stakes stories. The crowd will decide who becomes the D.C. storytelling champion. Buy tickets now at themoth.org forward slash D.C. That's themoth.org forward slash D.C. We hope to see you there.

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Kate Tellers, your host for this episode. When I was five, my dad, through a local trivia contest, won a trip to Disney World due to his niche knowledge of Pittsburgh architectural facades. As that fact might suggest, we were not a Disney family. We were a listen to records and cut the grass with a push mower type of family. So this trip was a complete change of course for us. True to its promise as the happiest place on earth,

The highs were so high. I saw my first live salamander on the side of our condo. I got bright pink Mickey Mouse ears and Cinderella waved to me from the parade. I was sad to return to my other reality and even sadder to discover that the photo my dad snapped of Cinderella's wave was shot a second too late and cut the back of her head.

But the Disney folks know how to hook you, and this unlocked a many-year obsession with Cinderella. I actually wore glass slippers to my senior prom.

In honor of summer vacation, this episode, we're heeding the advice of innumerable Super Bowl winners and taking a trip to Disney World with three stories all about the Magic Kingdom and the complex emotions that arise when we visit a place of fantasy and forced wonder. Just a heads up that this isn't all Dole Whips and Mickey Mouse ears. The first two stories deal with some pretty heavy topics.

First up, we've got Sarah Rae Lancaster. She told this story at a Milwaukee Story Slam where the theme of the night was happy. Here's Sarah live at the Moth. My grandpa loved Disney World. Which, anyone who met him, this would probably take them by surprise. Because he was a very stern, very well-educated, sometimes intimidating World War II vet. But when he entered that park...

he transformed into a little boy. He joked, he laughed, he ate way more ice cream than his cardiologist ever would have allowed. And we usually took this trip over his birthday, which was even funnier because when you go to Disney World on your birthday, you get a button from the Magic Kingdom Town Hall. So his would read, "My name is Bob and it's my birthday." I think you're supposed to wear this button on your birthday. He would wear it the entire trip.

And he would tell everyone that he could that he was in the sixth year of his ninth decade. Because saying he was 86 was just way too easy for him. This particular trip fell on his 88th birthday. And to be honest, the entire family was a little worried whether or not he'd be able to make it. He was in the late stages of congestive heart failure. And to be honest, his health had taken a decline that last year. And...

Even his doctors at the VA had said that they wanted him to actually admit himself to the hospital the week of the trip. Grandpa, being Grandpa, stubbornly replied, "No, I'm going to Disney World." And he hopped that plane two days later and made the trek to Disney World.

It was a rough couple of days. The trip had taken quite a toll on him. And he sat in the hotel room the first few days, but we were able to celebrate his birthday and on the third day we were able to make it to the Magic Kingdom with him. And if you would have seen the way the park employees clapped and cheered for him when he entered those gates, you would have thought Walt himself had just arrived.

At that point, it was kind of like this bucket list race against time to get Grandpa on all the things he wanted to see. We got the family picture in front of the park, we met Mickey Mouse and got our picture taken with him, and we crammed all 26 of us onto one tiny boat that still managed to float through Small World, Grandpa's favorite ride.

All the while, that wonderful earworm of a song staying with us. It's a world of laughter, it's a world of tears, it's a world of hope, it's a world of fears. The next day, we met fear. I woke up to two paramedics wheeling my grandpa out of our hotel room on a gurney. He'd struggled to breathe the entire night, and they were going to take him to a nearby hospital to make sure it wasn't pneumonia.

But Grandpa had strict orders for that day. While my grandma and his kids could go with him to the hospital, the grandkids and great-grandkids were to go to the parks and have fun. We tried our best. And during the day we'd get text messages saying things like, "He's feeling better, breathing easier, they don't think it's pneumonia, but they're going to keep him overnight for observation." So things were looking good. We just sat down at the Finding Nemo stage show when the phone rang. It was my dad.

Grandpa's gone into cardiac arrest. Get outside and start passing the phone and saying goodbye to grandpa. You like to think you know what to say to somebody when you know it's the last words they're gonna hear from you. But at that moment, the only thing any of us could think of was, "I love you." So we started passing the phone. "Grandpa, it's Sarah. I love you so much." "Grandpa, it's Chad. I love you. Goodbye." And on down the line we went, all 21 of us.

with a nurse on the other end of the phone holding it up to his ear so he could hear us because she knew hearing was the last sense to go until the line went dead and so did Grandpa's heart. We stood there, stunned. Suddenly our family vacation went from Disney Family Classic to National Lampoon and we didn't know what to do. Around us, other families were smiling and laughing and still having the time of their life and it seemed so unfair. But then that's when it hit me.

Grandpa leaving this earth while visiting the happiest place on earth was pretty close to perfect. That place made him so happy. He loved that place and he loved being with his family at it. And so for him to spend his final days with both, it was the perfect story. Thank you.

That was Sarah Lancaster. Since sharing this story, Sarah and husband John added two kids, Jack and Evangeline, to the family Disney trips and found their happiest place on earth on a flower farm they started in Door County, Wisconsin. She is consistently inconsistent about documenting that adventure at 180blog.com.

I haven't just visited the Disney parks as a child. In my first New York City job, my friend and I snuck out of a conference where we were presenting and did the park as adults. We even expensed lunch from Donald Duck's turkey leg cart by cutting off the top of the receipt with his name. Honestly, it was completely worth it. Up next is Michelle Ephraim. She told this at a Boston Grand Slam where the theme of the night was never again. Here's Michelle live at the Moth.

When I was eight years old, one of our neighbors, a psychiatrist, pulled me aside and told me, "Your parents are depressed. Very depressed." I was like, "Yeah, duh, I knew that." My parents weren't like my friend's parents. They were Holocaust survivors. As kids, they'd both escaped from actual, real Nazis in Germany.

They were defined by this trauma. Always paranoid, always convinced that something bad was going to happen to us. One time they wouldn't let me go to a kid's backyard sprinkler birthday party because they'd read somewhere that you could drown in an inch of water. I knew all about Uncle Walter and Aunt Pauline and Grandma Marta, how they hadn't made it out. And in our living room we had a big picture of Uncle Walter,

Always a reminder. But when our neighbor said that to me, I was so embarrassed. It was one thing for me to know about my parents, but another thing altogether for the neighborhood to think about us as that weird Holocaust family. I had to do something. I was their only child. I was a first-generation American, unscarred by war.

It was my job to cheer them up and to make us less weird. I knew I needed to do something. I needed to get us to Disney World. It was the happiest place on Earth, according to the ads. We needed a big dose of optimism and joy, and that's where all the happy, shiny American people went, and I wanted to be just like them.

Because my parents followed my lead on anything to do with American popular culture, they agreed, and I agreed to all of their conditions. No roller coasters, no rides where we might fall out or hit our heads or lose a limb. When we got to the Magic Kingdom, my parents were shocked by the crowds and the employees dressed as Mickey Mouse. Goofy.

I was not to interact with those people, they said, because the people who take those kinds of jobs are the same people who try to hurt small children. They're very dangerous because you can't see their faces. I insisted that we start with the best ride of all, the most popular attraction in the park, the spectacular Haunted Mansion. The line was really long,

And by the time we got to the front of it, my parents were in a really bad mood. I was excited. We went into the mansion, got ushered into the portrait parlor, and there my parents and I, along with the big crowd we were in, looked at the framed faces on the wall, and a spooky voice said we were descending. And as we slowly moved down,

The faces on the wall, the portraits started to stretch, revealing bodies that were in various states of torture and imminent death. One was sinking into quicksand, another about to be gobbled up by an alligator. This isn't funny, I thought. It's terrifying. And when that spooky voice said something like, and there's no way out, I pretty much lost my shit. Howled.

And I thrashed the people around us again and again like we were a giant mosh pit. That spooky voice had underestimated me because I did get out. The handlers were upon us in moments. And as everyone else got into their doom buggy to do the ride like normal people,

My parents and I were being escorted out of the Haunted Mansion, through a secret exit, and out into the glaring Florida light. My fear of the Haunted Mansion immediately shifted to fear of my parents. I'd made them fly to Orlando for this. The sun exposure, no place to sit, all the people who had coughed on us in line, and now this? I'd humiliated them.

They started walking quickly and I followed them, bracing myself. Then they stopped in front of a restaurant and my father asked me whether I wanted an ice cream. And my mother said, "She can have as many ice creams as she wants!" They weren't mad. They were relieved. They'd been scared too, or at least miserable. It was like I had taken one for the team and gotten us the fuck out of there. We laughed.

We ate ice cream. They were the happiest they'd been since we'd entered the park. I had brought them joy, just not in the way that I'd expected. Those pictures on the wall made me think about Uncle Walter, and they unleashed a place inside me that knew real danger, the danger that my parents knew so well. They were happy because I understood their unhappiness.

And I knew I'd go home and still feel bad that we were that weird Holocaust family. But in that moment, we were like a freaky version of a perfect family on a perfect vacation. We didn't need the haunted mansion. We had our own haunted split level that we were going home to together. Thank you.

That was Michelle Ephraim. Michelle is an English professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She's the author of Green World, a tragicomic memoir of love and Shakespeare, winner of the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press, and co-author of Shakespeare, Not Stirred, Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas.

Finally, we've got something from Jesse Klein, a favorite story from the archive, that just so happens to be about Disney World. Jesse told this story at a New York City main stage where the theme of the night was crack up. Here's Jesse, live at the Moth. Hi everybody. On the morning of my 28th birthday, I woke up at the happiest place on earth, aka the Enchanted Kingdom.

AKA Disney World, AKA what the hell am I doing here? And actually I was there for the wedding of my little sister who in a sort of like 16 candles twist had decided that she was going to get married on the day before my birthday at Disney World. And just to be clear, it wasn't like she and her fiance were like,

quote-unquote, getting married at Disney World, like, ironically. Like, ha-ha, so funny. You know, like, it wasn't, like, drinking PBR, wearing, like, Von Dutch trucker cap. Irony funny. It was more like she and her fiancé were both, like, super fucking into Disney World and, like, mega psyched to get married there. That's their thing. Now, the thing is, um, my family is Jewish, obviously, and, uh...

And my sister's fiance's family, they're conservative Jews, so when we found out they wanted to get married at Disney World, we were collectively very surprised and collectively super not stoked. And my dad nominated me to have the talk with her about maybe not doing this. And the talk was basically me saying to my sister, "You know Walt Disney was a Nazi, right?" "Mauschwitz, LOL."

My sister is like, "Jessie, ugh, the people who work at Disney aren't Nazis anymore." And I'm all, "Aren't they?" But she was very stubborn about it. That's what they wanted to do and she was insistent on going forward with this plan, which meant that I was going to spend my birthday sliding into my 30s as a single girl celebrating the wedding of my little sister at Disney World.

Yay. And so just to give you a little bit of background, I am the middle sibling of three. Little sister, older brother. And at this point in the story, both of my siblings have found their partners on the worldwide interweb. I am the only single one of the group. Still am. That's not really the point right now, just putting it out there. If anyone really gives a shit or whatever.

And while I'm very happy for them, I'm also very disturbed for myself because the thing is when we were kids, we were all super nerdy. Hard to imagine, I'm sure. We were super, we were shock and honored.

But comparatively, I was like the least nerdy. So I always imagined that if any of us were going to find someone, it would be me. You know, and my like mantra when I was with them was always like, good luck nerds, hope you find someone. And you know, and now they've like both married, you know, my brother had married and she is marrying like very nice people. And I am the one who's home alone eating like macadamia nut lonely heart chunk ice cream. And

listening to the Ally McBeal soundtrack, which, uh, that's sad and true, but I will say, number one, it was a zeitgeist thing, and Vonda Shepard was a talent. I don't, I just, I'm not gonna, anyway, I digress. People who know what I'm talking about, you know. Anyway, so, uh,

Like a couple weeks before the wedding, my sister informs me that she and her fiancé have decided to spend a little extra to have the characters attend the reception. Of course. And I decide that if I am single and I am going to be spending my birthday weekend at Disney World, then I am definitely fucking one of the characters while I'm there. And, um...

I kind of put my hopes on Tigger, who I've always kind of had a thing for. I like his, like, barrel chest and his, like, upbeat approach to life. We all can dream. So my plan is to leave...

Friday morning for the rehearsal dinner, which is Friday night, and because I leave everything to the last minute, I don't pick up my bridesmaid dress till Thursday morning. It's like a floor-length lavender embroidered sateen thing. It's just beautiful. And anyway, so I have it, and then around 4:30 that afternoon, as I'm wrapping up a long day of personal emailing and Googling myself,

All of a sudden, the lights pop out, and my computer goes off, and the Northeast is plunged into the worst blackout in the history of the United States. I don't know if anyone remembers that fun time. And it's just, it's a clusterfuck.

And so with the subways not working, I join, you know, just like, remember, it's like throngs of humanity trudging through the August heat from Midtown. I have to walk home to Brooklyn just with, like, thousands of other New Yorkers, but I notice that I'm the only one carrying a 30-pound bridesmaid dress over my shoulder. And I realize somewhere around Varick Street that I have become a Kathy cartoon. Like...

Is that a horrible woman from the comics who, like, hates horizontal stripes and doesn't want to show up for a bathing suit? And it's like, argh, sweat beads. And it's like, ugh. So, um...

With all the power out, I really almost did not make it to the wedding. And in fact, I did not make it to the rehearsal dinner. I went to the terminal at JFK the next day, to the Delta terminal, and I discovered that all the power is out there. And miraculously, in a post-9/11 world, they also have no plan for dealing with no power, like at all. And in fact, some guy gets on a megaphone and tells all of the people that it's a crapshoot

as to whether any planes are gonna take off. And crapshoot isn't a word you wanna hear anywhere near air travel. It's like, maybe, maybe not. And so actually,

I didn't make it, you know, no planes take off that day. And I get home desperately trying to find any plane to get me to Disney World the next day. There is one ticket left on any carrier, right? It's on Continental, one way, New York to Orlando. It's $800, which is what I spent going to Japan round trip a few months before. But I have to buy it. It's my sister's wedding.

And it's Disney World. And so the next morning I go to the flight. I'm so stressed and nervous before the flight that as soon as I sit down, I take an Ambien. I forget that you should not take a whole Ambien before a two-hour flight. So, oops. So when I land, I am wildly hallucinating, right? Wildly seeing double.

greeted by a wedding planner who's like, "Go directly to Hair!" And I'm like, "I'm going!" And then you're just melting, everything's melting. And the ambience just starts to wear off sometime around the beginning of the reception, at which point I'm so exhausted, I just decide the only logical thing to do is get really drunk and wait for the characters to arrive. The amazing... Hold on one second. Edge of your seat. Hold on.

This didn't count as time. The amazing thing about the way they do the character entries at a Disney wedding is that they go B-list and then C-list and then A-list, right? So first, Donald and Daisy come in, right? And then Chip and Dale, the chipmunks. And then, just when you're like going crazy, you can't wait another second, you're gonna burst. Mickey and Minnie are here! Mickey and Minnie are here! You're like, yay! And, um...

It's like staggered. So Mickey and Minnie come in and they start us doing the Hora because it is a Jewish wedding. For real. And the character whose hand I end up holding is Dale's. Pretty quickly I find myself in a flirtation that I can best describe as smoldering.

Because at first we're dancing, and then we're slow dancing, and my torso is pressed against his furry little underbelly. And I think part of the reason it's so sort of sensuous, two things. One, they're not allowed to speak, so there's silence. You can't talk at all.

Nothing. And then the other thing is you can't see into their eyes. All you see are just these black dots of vast, endless hatred. So sexy. So a few hours later, I am so wasted but totally happy. Me and Dale are entwined. We are the envy of all the other interspecies couples.

And Lady in Red is playing, and I have my head on Dale's shoulder, and I realize there's never gonna be a more perfect moment to make my move, so I squeeze his paw. And then I step back, and I'm like, and I try to be sexy, right? As sexy as you can be after three vodka tonics, two Disney Chardonnays, and a 10 milligram Ambien. And I'm like, look, I'm having a really great time with you, and I kind of, I don't want it to end.

I am staying at the Contemporary Resort in room 239 and if you would, I don't know if you want to come back to my room but you're totally... And Dale just like stops and takes a step back and then he just goes and that was the moment I realized oh my god if he consummates this he will probably be fired potentially also killed. You know like we're in a kingdom like who knows what laws apply and um

And then it wasn't until a few days later that I, like literally maybe a week, I was like, person in the costume, not necessarily a man. Actually, probably not. Anyway, it was a night. The next morning, I wake up. It is my birthday. I am on a twin-size bed, alone, on Eeyore sheets.

And even though my flight is not till 10, I leave there at 6 a.m. because the room is so unbearably disgusting. I cannot be in there another second. It's so ugly. So I get to the terminal. I watch the sunrise. I wait for the woman to come and start letting people into the gate. And I never, ever play the birthday card. I hate that. But because it's been such a crazy weekend, when the woman arrives, I go up to her and I'm like, look, it's a crazy time getting here. Blackout. Is there any way you could upgrade me to first class?

And she's really nice and she's like, "You know, there's no first class on this plane, but I promise we'll take care of you." Great, fine, I figure maybe an extra blanket, that sounds perfect. So people start to arrive at the gate.

It's a couple hundred people, whatever. And then we find out we're gonna be delayed again, so everyone's cranky. And the woman gets on the loudspeaker finally, and she's like, "Okay, I wanna thank y'all for choosing Delta Song today. We're probably gonna board you in about 20 minutes. But before I do, just wanna let y'all know we have a birthday girl here." Her name's Jessie. I think we should all say, "Happy birthday!" And I'm just like, "You bitch."

You bitch, you know, just tidal wave of hatred for her. But it's interrupted because everyone, despite the fact that it's super early and we're delayed and everyone's really upset, everyone starts to sing happy birthday to me. And that, you know, like really sweet. And it just suddenly, it was like, it just changed everything. I was like, this has actually all been leading to this moment. And I feel like...

People like, I have this like optimism now, like people are really nice. People are basically good, you know, we're all just on this crazy blue marble together. I don't know, one love.

And it's like so just lovely, you know? And then we get on the plane and I get like a plastic glass of shampers, so nice, and I just sit in my seat and I'm like, I'm making, everything's fine. Like I feel I've done it. I made it through this weekend. It's my birthday. It's going to be fine. And I'm really relaxed. And then like about, I don't know, half an hour into the flight,

feeling good with the shampers and all of a sudden, you know, the woman gets on the thing and she's like, you know, we're gonna be a short flight today, gonna be cruising back into New York in about, you know, 45 minutes and thank y'all for choosing Delta Song today. I do wanna, I do wanna, I do wanna just let y'all know we have a birthday girl.

here on the plane today, so why don't we all sing her happy birthday? And I'm like, because it's so obvious, everyone's looking at me, everyone's like, what? You know what I mean? Like, because it's so clear the woman at the gate did not communicate with the woman on the plane, and like, now it seems like I'm a jackass. Like, I'm the kind of person who tells everyone I mean it's my birthday. Like, I'm five years old, like some douche.

And I'm so embarrassed. And then this guy, like eight seats behind me, says super loud, he goes, we're ready. And I just, all right, people are basically bad. People are basically bad. And just slouched down in my seat, waited to get back to New York where the lights were finally. Thank you guys so much.

That was Jessie Klein. Jessie is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning TV writer and performer. She has also written two New York Times bestselling books. Her most recent book, I'll Show Myself Out, Essays on Midlife and Motherhood, is available in paperback. That's it for this episode. Remember, if you liked these stories, be sure to share this podcast with a friend and tell them to subscribe so that they can take a listen as soon as it comes out.

From all of us here at The Moth, we hope that wherever you are is the happiest place on Earth. Kate Tellers is a storyteller, host, senior director at The Moth, and co-author of their fourth book, How to Tell a Story. Her story, but also Brink Cheese, is featured in The Moth's All These Wonders, true stories about facing the unknown. And her writing has appeared on Mick Sweeney's and The New Yorker. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Ginness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger.

The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Gluchet, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant Walker, Leigh Ann Gulley, and Aldi Kaza. The Moth would like to thank its supporters and listeners. Stories like these are made possible by community giving. If you're not already a member, please consider becoming one or making a one-time donation today at themoth.org slash giveback. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by the storytellers.

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.