Dizziness and Disneyness: Idyllic innocence of Early Youth
Chapter 4 of the Founder's Journey

Many people I have met are deep down envious of the kind of earliest childhood I experienced. Of course, I had no idea how good I had it. To me, it was the onset of normalcy I'd never previously experienced, but I not only took it for granted, being all I really knew, I had no idea I WAS taking it for granted.

Pajamas, for example, were just the coolest. It felt amazing to run around with those slippy feet, crawl about under the countertop in my own little cave where I had enough room to play like a cat in a box fort, wearing plastic bowls stored there like helms.

Mom often said she was regularly told my hyperactive behavior would get old and problematic but she explained later she was so happy to have me that she didn't care. She found most of my antics to be every bit as cute as they were intended, and we rarely had many clashes at all at that time. In turn, she was the center of my world, which simply went without having to even say it.

Now and then she'd walk me down to the local Post Office or store. I remember the fog in the Blue Diamond valley could be thick and mystical and getting gifts like sticks of gum handed through a surprising letter grate was just the kind of thing that would happen during this time and place of regular surprise and sorcery.

I loved meeting new people and they loved meeting me back. I was that kid that said hello with a contagious smile to everyone at the grocery store, whether I was riding in the top of the cart properly in the foldout, or under it where the potatoes would normally go.

I recall laughing a lot, whining very little, except when I wanted a bit of candy in the checkout aisle where I'd slowly grow into the worst kind of expectant diva to get whatever I wanted.

I did struggle with clothes and getting dressed efficiently, and feeling like if I ever had to learn how to tie my shoes again, it simply wouldn't be worth having to experience that all over - knots and I have never gotten along much. I remember this now thinking how interesting it was that I should ever have felt like it was really getting old as if I'd done it a number of times before.

There were times I wished Dad was home more often. I remember him going out with an orange handled hack saw to get wood for the fireplace. He didn't have much room behind the house for where he stored the wood, but it was so amazing that it was up a small ladder to a landing behind the house where the sticks were stored. I remember that first winter being in awe of the snow that fell since I had never seen these crazy crystals falling from the sky before.

Dad always had a big chair that he would sit me in and spin me around and around. So much fun! Knowing what I know now about chakras, he probably did me a massive favor for a lifetime having done that but it was just amazing fun at the time.

A year or so later he even built me a sandbox that I played in with the best Tonka trucks and erector sets.

Obviously he went to work most days and sometimes even a week or more on business trips and training experiences. When I would whine and ask why he was out of the home so much, Mom would patiently try to explain that he had to go out to make money for us. He usually brought home the coolest trinkets whenever he was gone for more than just the day.

I literally thought that meant he was piecing coins together somewhere like they began as puzzle pieces that had to be fused into their final form and he had to sit in a factory assembling them - 'making money'. He was actually establishing himself as a National Park Ranger up the road at Red Rock, and had been assigned to quite a few posts already before they had me.

I thought about things in a number of odd ways to interpret the world, as explained, with out of the box thinking like that. I was full of questions and often got simple answers that didn't quite explain in full. I swore that the reason I had thoughts and what was happening on the inside of my body was something similar to what happens inside a Keebler elf tree, little beings inside making everything happen.

Until I sat and considered it throughout the last few weeks, seeking what I would write about next, I had never realized just how much Disney material I was absorbing throughout this time and much of my early childhood as a whole. Walt Disney himself would be proud of the massive influence his work had on a kid like me.

Bambi and Thumper, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Cinderella, The Flying Elephant Dumbo, and the amazingly AI-prescient Pinocchio were my guides to understanding life, love, and meaning - right alongside bumps in the head to learn walls were hard. I saw myself as the absolute embodiment of Tigger.

I can't think of this time without the hauntingly beautiful singing that introduced those films. What a way to have ideas of romance and adventure introduced! It's not hard to see where a LOVE of fantasy was born here. I believe I even had two amazing Disney art dioramas of all the characters in various themes above my crib in my room.

I got to see many of the original movies as they were coming out. I'm sure that some preceded me but since there weren't yet VCRs, and TV's were still a bit rudimentary and just entering the true color age, I believe many repeated in theaters. My parents, being so wonderful as they were, ensured I would get to see quite a few of those on the actual big-screens.

There were golden books of them too, and not only just of them, but many of the classics like Doctor Seuss and Aesop's Fables and the Little Engine that Could. I repeat it to myself still today when I feel gets tough, "I think I can, I think I can!"

Both Mom and Dad were great at reading a storybook to me nightly. Lessons of morality to settle in for a very long time.

Our first Christmas was to be a truly enchanted time. Mom's side of the family lived in a nice little gated community in Los Angeles and Dad's in a perfectly white picket fence neighborhood in El Cajon no more than an hour away. Plenty of time on the road to learn that age old art of asking thousands of times if we were there yet before arriving.

I came to truly love road trips. But as a young child, the fact you could take a nap and wake up somewhere totally new was a feeling similar to teleportation.

Apparently I was intended to meet my Great Grandmother, but sadly she passed as we were on our way for our first visit. I had no idea about that until much later, unfortunately.

I was well received by the wider family. The love and embrace they showed I received well and reflected back. They tried to record me on tape and it worked for a few minutes of questions and answers, but devolved rapidly as I found the needle that was moving every time I spoke to be hilariously distracting. Few could hear my laughter without laughing along with me. I was a natural star in my family stage.

I don't remember if the Christmas tree was new for me or not but to see one with so many ornaments and gifts under it at my Grandparent's home on my Mom's side had to have been quite new and enchanting. I remember being given many things but one that would go to stand out above most was a football and helmet that later Dad and I would play with in the hall floor extensively. Pretty sure some of those trucks I got that I played in the sandbox with were from under that tree too.

Grandma S was a deeply Norwegian rooted descendant and a stoic woman, whom I would later argue with a lot about how spoiled I was as a child. I always took this to mean she thought my parents should go out of their way to make things harder on me because somehow she didn't think I deserved being treated well, but it wasn't until a lot later it made sense.

As she had been some 7th or 20th sibling growing up on the Dakotah plains with an outhouse during the winter, not dissimilar to a Little House on the Prairie style upbringing, she truly feared for my ability to take care of myself later in life. Perhaps she was more right than any of us could guess at the time.

She loved her wine and I was a little afraid of her sometimes. She would argue with Dad about spinning me in HER kitchen chairs and to me, she was just a special kind of stick in the mud, but I despite her Viking-stoic nature, I knew that she loved me.

Grandpa 'S', same side of the family, was very nice but a bit emotionally difficult to connect with. I think I was a crazy chaos spirit in his otherwise calm and dignified world. He had some kind of Real Estate marketing breakthrough career nobody in the family could explain, including himself, and he had done quite well as a result. There were many pictures of huge gatherings of men in suits taking place in his back yard. Clearly, a man used to business and respect.

He often shuffled slowly around his property a lot and was later quite proud of his tomato garden (which I would be too now, had that kind of abundance been the result of MY efforts!)

They had quite a back yard, later with a pool and segmented so that my Aunt's horse had a Mr-Ed-Esque barn in the far rear next to a neighbor who had a loud squawking bird that I was so fortunate to glimpse through the vines later as it spread out its amazing feather display. Peacocks are quite a thing for a young kid to spy on.

Not sure if it was during this first visit but I would later meet their Mexican groundskeeper, Silvario, and their house maid who's name sadly eludes me - I'll probably edit this later as soon as it strikes me late at night in the near future. They were really neat people, very friendly, and they tried to teach me a little Spanish, but weren't too good with English at all so most of what I tried to say to them got little in return but a smile and a nod.

From the moment of that first visit, I remember a huge wall art piece hanging on a wall outside, a bronze caste astrology wheel. Asking my Mom about it, she explained it was an ancient mythological belief that had no reality to it. People 'used to think' that their lives were guided by mysterious influences in the stars and while she'd loved her college classes in astronomy to know the astrological constellations, she considered the whole idea antiquated and crazy - people knew better now.

That's very much like how both Mom and Dad were about most of these subjects surrounding myth. It was entertainment, cartoon, what silly people used to believe before the arrival of real science.

A few hours drive down the road a week later and I was introduced to my Dad's side of the family and I'll save those introductions for later. For now, I'll just relate that my my Mom's side was welcoming, but a little cold and a touch creepy, much like the old tree that would scare me at night by knocking at my room's window in the wind, as it did in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Despite sometimes thinking something watched me from under the bed, no true magic existed in these homes, banished away in the skeptical mindset of my Parents and Grandparents and more, washed out by technological fascination of tv and radio and college educations. Nevertheless, magic and pagan/Christian roots were a part of the essence of the childhood experience, and prepared me for later, wide-eyed fascinated exploration as an adult.

The kind I soon intend to start sharing through mini-courses that for some may seem basic, for others mystical silly woo, and for some, more surprisingly valid than they might've previously assumed, which is how it struck me as a young adult. All in due time.