PerfectlyTurbulent

Well, I’m back.

I’ve had a busy month since moving back to Canada so I grabbed a last minute flight to Florida on the 28th to visit a friend and then try my luck at the last Cecchin family vacation. Risky business!

The trip started out great. I rented a Chevy HHR which looks like something a cartoon character might drive. Which I guess was appropriate as I found myself driving it into Disneyworld later in the week.

My first stop was 2hrs south of Orlando to visit a good friend of mine in the city of Vero Beach. Though the area was beautiful, essentially a retirement community for Canadians, this town rivals most cemeteries in terms of its fun factor. But luckily this was just what the doctor ordered, a little r&r at the beach.

Before getting there I told my buddy that since I arrived on a Thursday night, I had no problem hanging out by myself on Friday while he went to work. I mentioned that I could use a day on the beach just reading and lying around solo. Little did I know that I was giving these instructions on opposite day. As soon as I arrived he introduced me to his friend Scott- who was nicknamed Jersey- that would be my tour guide all day Friday. Neat. Not only had my plans of a day alone been successful thwarted, but Jersey just happened to be a 36 year old ex-con who had just been released from prison 6 months prior. Neat. Neat.

One point in his corner is when Jersey described to me his perspective on his own personality. “Listen Mike, I”m not rude, but I’m not pleasant”. Shakespeare could not have phrased it any better. Convicts aside the weekend was great, filled with endless amounts of joking, laughter, euro dance classics, and a pull out sofa that I’m fairly certain shortened my lifespan and dislocated my L4 vertebrae.

Oh, and if I can impart some wise words…never take sun tanning advice from a ex-con whose skin looks like it should be removed and use to make Louis Vuitton handbags. I ended Friday with the worse front torso burn in all my years of sun exposure. If it was December I would have been set, because it looked like I was wearing a seasonal Christmas sweater. Nothing like going to Vero Beach for a weekend to pick up some good times and some melanoma.

On Sunday I joined my family on what is likely the final chapter in the Cecchin Family Vacation Chronicles, I didn’t expect my reunion with Mickey Mouse would be as enjoyable as it was.

On Day One I saw Cinderella’s castle from the ferry boat to The Magic Kingdom and I felt something I haven’t felt in quite a while; at the time I thought it was just a muscle spasm from having to share a pullout sofa with my brother, but I later found it was the unearthing of much more.

Each day began as the one before; we all woke up later than scheduled, argued through breakfast and pushed one another into the car where I amazingly watched as though my hands were on the wheel my mother drove from the back seat.

As it was Mama Cecchin’s first trip to the land of Mickey Mouse I made sure to equip my patience patrol with riot gear. But surprisingly enough I enjoyed her enthusiasm for everything Disney (even the merry-go-round she made us wait in line for). I don’t know if it was spending the day at Disney with my family, or just the whole environment itself but by the end of the day I felt like I was 11 years old again. It was 8pm and the 3 of us stood amongst a crowd of thousands, awe-struck by the fireworks display exploding around Cinderella’s castle.

It was then that I realized what I felt on the ferry boat on my way in that morning. The feeling had been building steam all day and I could finally put my finger on it as the “When you wish upon a star…” song began to round out the fireworks show. For lack of a better term, I think that feeling was my childhood, an innocent joy.

To give you an idea of what I mean; my room was littered with Disney books when I was a kid. Stories with Donald, Goofy, Scamp, and my favourite, Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. Even when I got older my family and I used to sit down together at 6pm most Sunday nights and watch movies sponsored and made by, The Wonderful World of Disney. And after spending close to 9 hours walking around The Magic Kingdom seeing boys and girls being dressed as princesses and pirates to spend the day in costume and live in a land of make believe, it really made me smile (in a non-sex offender kind of way).

Imagination is an incredible thing and is essentially what Disneyland and Disneyworld are based on. One man’s dream to transform unoccupied Florida SWAMPLAND into the world’s most beloved and visited attraction.

I find when we get older and our minds make the permanent move into reality, the majority of our time is consumed with making sense of that reality. We live in a constant state of management. Managing the opportunities and setbacks of the moment, managing our own expectations, and taking joys in the pleasures reality has to offer. But its a different dynamic when you’re in that state of make believe. Because nothing matters. Everything has a happy ending. The prince rescues the princess, the evil forces are defeated, and Dorothy makes it back home.

I look around and I see a lot of people have stopped dreaming. We forget what it was like to live in the land of make believe and sometimes it gets so far out of reach we don’t even know how to begin again.

I think that’s why our imagination is something we all need to strive to hold on to, because having dreams is what makes life worthwhile sometimes. It makes our challenges not as steep, and our triumphs that much sweeter.

And if that’s not enough reason to head down to Orlando on your next vacation, Pleasure Island has a lot of booze.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under What I'm doing....You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.