Disneyland or Paris--is there really a debate?

It was virtually the same price--financially, but the emotional price I would have had to pay to wallow in the depths of middle America while drowning in the consumerism would have been just too great for my fragile soul. That was the reasoning I set before my carpool buddy, Mr. Attorney, who had been chiding me, for years, for not taking The Beast to Disneyland.

“It is anti-American to deny your child at least one trip to Disneyland.” he said in his best defense attorney voice...playing it up to a jury that was not present.

“Look, I survived quite nicely sans Mickey and Donald.” I said to his flashing wire-rimmed glasses as we merged into the NYC traffic. “I don’t feel like my childhood was scarred by the absence of a Disneyland trip. What is YOUR obsession with Disneyland? Hey! Do you have Disney stock?”

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It was Fate—I am sure of it. I was SO CLOSE to pressing the “submit” button on the Disney site. Five nights in some hotel that looked like a pinball machine...pools crawling with kids....grown people dressed as Goofy...large, lumbering families who will all have diabetes in five years all wearing Mickey Mouse ears. It was SO depressing, but I was doing it for the Beast. It was a moment of true selflessness on my part.

Of course...it was JUST a moment and then the fickle finger of Fate pointed the way out. As I sat looking at the “submit” button on my computer screen, an e-mail popped up from a friend, a savior really. “Subject: Wow! Cheap Trip to Paris.”

That night during dinner I announced to The Beast. “Guess What! We are going to Paris—just like the Rugrats!”

She smiled happily and said—”Oh that’s nice, but I was sort of hoping to go to Umbria. “

“Perhaps we can do Italy next year.” I told my wonderful, beautiful, kooky Beast.

Like any true artist, The Beast LOVED Paris
From the Metro

To the Tuileries

To the Eiffel Tower

Just remember--when you are feeling peer pressure to act or do something that goes against your natural inclinations--just say no. Go to Paris instead.