Ok, so I definitely jacked that title from the song in the early 2000's, but it's still an important piece of advice that fits just preciously in what I'm about to tell you.
Disney World.
Epic.
Every individual that's alive or has been alive at some point, wants to go to Disney World (Disneyland will suffice as a substitute).
Make believe characters running around you all the time? Tiny princesses and princes AND rides?! HOLY CRAP IT'S HEAVEN.
Ok, perhaps an exaggeration, but I tell you no lies when I say that I am 27 3/4 years old, and I want to go back to Disney. And not just because the one and only time I've ever been was a complete and utter train wreck, but because it's the most magical place on earth. Minus...no, there's not even a cute enough joke to go here, because Disney World is it. It's absolutely amazing.
Rides, characters, delicious funnel cake and cotton candy, AND an entire area that is like a zoo?! (I have a thing about zoos...not really sure why). There's basically no losing at DW.
FALSE.
PAUSE.
I just thought I'd let you in on the fact that I'm writing this blog about the most magical place on earth while listening to Flobot's "Handlebars" - doesn't add up. But a lovely little tune nonetheless.
PLAY.
I lost at Disney World. And not in the, 'I played a game and lost and didn't win the most giant stuffed tiger at the booth', kind of lost. I mean a loss about as epic as Disney itself.
I was 15 when I went to Disney World for the first time. And I was every bit excited at 15 as I would have been if I was 5 because, as previously stated, IT'S THE MOST MAGICAL PLACE ON EARTH.
The trip to Disney happened because it's where our band director decided to take us for our band trip that year. It's the only trip I actually remember taking with band, other than the weekly trips to marching competitions in the fall, and SO HELP ME GOD IF YOU'RE MAKING FUN OF ME FOR BEING A BAND NERD RIGHT NOW.
Apologies. High school was rough.
So we left late at night and drove down to Orlando (which I've since dubbed 'Whorlando', and you would too if you spent any time near there as an adult) and I listened to my CD Player the entire trip. OMG I went through so many AA batteries on that trip obsessively listening to Savage Garden's sophomore album, Affirmation...
But I digress...
We get down to Orlando and I am SO FREAKING PUMPED. We stopped at some restaurant that I amazingly cannot remember now and had breakfast. All 80-something teenie boppers in this restaurant. God bless our chaperones and the staff of whatever establishment that was because band people are batshit crazy. DO NOT MAKE FUN.
Oddly, I remember brushing my teeth and pulling myself together enough to look appropriate for whatever dressed up character I'd run into first, but not eating breakfast or anything else. Just freaking out and running back and forth between the restaurant and the buses with my friends. Insane, I tell you. I'm not looking forward to when my hypothetical children are teenagers....boarding school, ftw.
Because we were there for a few days, the parks were split. If I remember correctly, Magic Kingdom was Day 1, Day 2 was Epcot and something else I cannot remember because I was so uninterested it wasn't funny, and Day 3 was Animal Kingdom (OMG ANIMALS) and Typhoon Lagoon Waterpark.
I can't believe I actually remembered that. That was a little Dustin Hoffman 'Rain Man' of me.
Ok, anyway. So we are briefed by the chaperones to meet back at this one place at 5 o'clock or something ridiculous. I didn't pay attention because we had broken through the gates and were actually standing in THE MOST MAGICAL PLACE ON EARTH. Off we go.
I've sunscreened up, per my mom, and as my last post pointed out, I don't fare well without it. We take off. OMG I don't even remember what we did. I think I was the oldest "child" on the Dumbo ride and the Tea Cup spinny ride. I vaguely remember sprinting through the Swiss Family Robinson house (we were teenagers and had a LOT of energy. Plus, these were the days when Surge was still a thing, so we literally sprinted through this house; also if you don't know what Surge is, I'm unsure that we can continue our friendship. JK, but no really.)
Also, whomever played Ariel in the OBC Recording of "Little Mermaid" on Broadway (did NOT know that existed), that is now playing on my Pandora Disney station, is screaming, not singing, "Part of Your World" and it is upsetting.
The morning of that first day was amazing. Running around in the sunshine, sugared up and ready to go. It was absolutely magical. It wasn't until the afternoon that I started losing at Disney World.
After lunch, we were headed to another part of the park, and we were walking next to some trolley tracks that run through the park. I was, obviously, a completely oblivious teenager, and did not realize that I had stepped into the tracks. I say into because I was, quite literally, IN a track divot. My friend, who was behind me, is telling some silly joke, and I am laughing and turn around to say something to her, and then it happened. Something popped or clicked or something unsettling in my knee. My foot was in a track, so when I tried to turn around, my knee turned, but not my foot.
LOSING AT DISNEY.
This was obv a less than fortunate event in the most magical place in the world, but I had nice friends, and they spent the day trading off piggie back rides for me and my increasingly swollen knee. Luckily, I was several inches shorter and about 25 pounds lighter than I am now.
That evening, we get to the gates, tell the chaperones and they are all blah blah cackle cackle, and I'm like, yo, I'm fine, this shan't destroy THE BEST VACATION EVER.
After we had dinner and settled into the hotel, I had droves of band moms coming in to check on me and change out the rotation of bags of ice I had been putting on my knee. I tried swimming, but with one largely bum knee, that was difficult. I called it a night, iced some more, took some Ibuprofen and passed out.
The next morning, my knee is huge. Shitsticks, I cannot walk around Heaven on a super large knee. So what happens? The band moms get me a wheelchair.
First thought: OMG I CANNOT BE THE 15 YEAR OLD IDIOT IN A WHEELCHAIR I WILL NEVER HAVE ANY FRIENDS AGAIN EVER MY LIFE IS OVER.
What really happened: OMG, Candice has 57302656485372 friends now because Disney is SUPER preciously nice to people riding dirty, wheelchair style.
I was insanely popular for our last two days there. Which was fun, except not. But I did get bumped to the front of every line and got to sit where I wanted on rides, so there was that.
As usual, I had sunscreen on, but I super sunscreened my right shin because it was all out there. You see, my knee was gigantic, and I couldn't bend it, so the little wheelchair foot rest had to be extended. Basically I was getting a killer tan, but only on that small part of my leg. Oh, also, I had a knee brace on, so my kneecap was exposed.
I must have sunscreened my lower leg every 2 or 3 hours for the next two days, but I still managed to lose epically at Disney. By the end of the 2nd day, my leg was an awesome lobster red. I tried to cover it with t-shirts, but if you have ever been to Florida in the spring/early summer, IT'S FRICKIN HOT. An extra piece of clothing was sending me into fits of hot panic (which is what I like to call what happens to me when I get too hot. I hot panic - in laymen's terms, it's just a hissy fit).
This was the time where not letting my injury ruin Disney started to fail me. My leg was on fire, my knee was throbbing, and my "friends" kept directing my wheelchair to the areas they wanted to explore, and none that I had any interest in discovering.
I was so stoked to go to Animal Kingdom, it was ridiculous. However, by the third day, I was quite miserable, so Animal Kindgom proved to be less than awesome. Between the knee pain and sunburn, the dinosaur ride we went on that should have been THE BEST DINOSAUR RIDE EVER, was only the most uncomfortable thing ever.
By the time we got to Typhoon Lagoon on the third day, my leg was so burnt that going in the pools was too painful. So I sat under an umbrella, in the shade, with my face painted like a tiger (the only thing that day that elevated my sadness...I looked like Mufasa, so that was kind of winning).
After what should have been the most amazing three days ever FINALLY ended, I couldn't wait to get home. We drove through the night back to South Carolina, and I went to bed ASAP.
The next morning, I realized how serious my situation was. I wore sunscreen, like 50 SPF, and put it on every few hours, and yet my right shin was PURPLE. Literally. Purple. It didn't hurt really, probably because I cooked almost all the layers of my skin, but I knew I may have a real problem when my dog put her paw on my leg, dragged her nails down my burnt skin, and it didn't hurt.
I have been varying degrees of medical professional, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that THAT IS NOT GOOD NEWS.
So basically, the next few days were pretty crappy. Once the purple faded, it blistered and peeled and I hated everything because a breeze would blow by and I swear to you that what was actually happening was Freedy dragging his knife-fingers across my leg. NOT precious.
Oh, also, my science teacher told me that I was pretty much 100% going to get skin cancer, so that made for an awesome afternoon. I cried through that whole day of school.
Good news: All the pain eventually went away, and a few months later I had knee surgery to fix my busted limb. However, there is this tiny thing that happened that I can't seem to get rid of.
The "tan".
For awhile, I had a circle on my kneecap that was all freckles, but that has since gone. What has not vanished, is the section of my leg where the knee brace ended and my sock started that is so freckled it is ridiculous. It will never go away, as, for me, sun exposure = freckles, and the more sun I get, the more freckles that shin gets, and it's never even with the rest of that leg, since one time, for 2 days, my shin was destroyed.
So watch out where you're walking, and wear sunscreen.
Oh, and one last thing. Learn to laugh at yourself and your happy accidents. Had I not busted my knee, I wouldn't have ridden half the rides I did because I would have been waiting in line. Running through Animal Kingdom, painted as Mufasa, would have been more fun than rolling around as Mufasa, but no matter what, I was the King of the Jungle for a day. And how many people can say that?
