Chris Mitchell Read Online Free

course, I was older now and educated, too skeptical to believe in a land of Magic and pixie dust. But at that moment, I was desperate, and a desperate person can justify anything. What I needed, I rationalized, was a happy, hopeful place, a safe harbor with a group of people I could trust, people who would dive into a dirty lagoon to save an innocent life. Friends, family, a job—if this was going to work, I needed to start from scratch with only the purest influences.
    “What can Disney do for you?” Orville asked again.
    I felt the seconds tick away, but still, my mind was blank, and so I blurted out the first words that came to me. “I didn’t know where else to go. I never planned what I’d do if everything went to hell. And so when everything did, in fact, go to hell, I panicked and ran and here I am.” My fingers were clenched in my lap, palms aching from the serrated edges of my unevenly chewed fingernails. “I don’t want anything from Disney. I’m just trying to find…some Magic.”
    And just like that, the word was out there, hanging in the air between us, shiny and clean and fragile like a bubble. I had crossed a line, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was a godless bastard requesting a reprieve from St. Peter. Orville nodded and leaned back in his chair, and for a moment, there was just the sound of the rain on the roof of the trailer. Then he said, “How soon can you start?”
    I signed the contract right there in the photo lab using a Minnie Mouse pen. During the course of my interview, the rain had abated so that by the time Orville ushered me outside, the sky was clear and the air had a damp, clean scent like when you stick your head in a dryer before the load is finished. I felt lighter than air. If somebody had cut me loose, I would’ve floated up, away from the trailer, beyond the magical kingdom and into the Caribbean sky.
    Orville cheerfully pumped my hand, then turned his attention to a stack of books and papers by the door. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we’re gonna get you started at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.”
    “So I’ll be shooting animals?”
    His eyes went wide as wheels. “Oh, my ears and whiskers, no! Animals don’t buy pictures.” He motioned for me to hold out my hands, then started dispensing papers and booklets, thick manuals of information. “Your job will be to work with the characters. You’ll take pictures of Mickey and Minnie and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger and anybody else our beloved guests wish to meet. And you’ll try to capture a moment on their faces that doesn’t look like desperate misery, and then you’ll sell the photos back to them at a very reasonable price.”
    By this time, my arms were full, and the stack of information was getting heavy. “That doesn’t sound very magical,” I mumbled.
    “Magic,” he said, “has nothing to do with it.”

When You Wish Upon a Star
    W alter Elias Disney died alone. According to the reports, there was a physician on duty and some hospital staff nearby, but neither his wife nor his two daughters were present when he finally succumbed to “acute circulatory collapse” on December 15, 1966. This fact is one of the little proofs I cite in my arguments for atheism.
    While he was alive and in charge of the theme parks, Walt was very particular about the appearance of his park staff, whom he re-branded Cast Members to make employment feel more like show biz. Among the many regulations in The Disney Look book I was violating were body piercing, facial hair, black nail polish. Men’s hair could not cover the ears or shirt collar, and sideburns could be no longer than the earlobes. After twenty-five years of stubborn rejection, Disney was finally allowing mustaches, but only the nonthreatening kind à la Tom Selleck, Keith Hernandez, or Ned Flanders. No beards. In my case, becoming a Disney Cast Member meant a transformation of near surgical proportions.
    First stop: the barber shop, where a thin wisp of a