The Implications of Calling Mickey Mouse Perverted While You Pretend to be a MILF at the Carnival

My charge for the day, 3-year-old Ruby, and I are skipping down the snow-covered sidewalk.

“This is going to be so fun,” she giggles in time to the swish of her snow pants.

It’s Winter Carnival, and our destination is the symbol of all things ice-blue and festive: The Ice Palace.

For 10 days in February, this town bustles with purposeful entertainment—filling us up with enough concerts, food, exhibitions, socializing, races and sporting events to carry us through till mud season.

Ruby and I, layered in fleece and insulated jackets and pants, have walked, skipped, slid, and run (with a little carrying on my part) a half mile to meet the Carnival characters.

I feel a bit odd in this environment—half wanting to be the impostor and claim Ruby and her dark eyes as mine, half wanting to claim my babysitter-for-a-day status.

I am the single woman, assumed single mother, stranger to all, and unidentified fraud in the crowd.

But Ruby’s enthusiasm wipes most of the social pretensions away.

“Peter! It’s Peter Rabbit.”

 

She scurries up to the 6-ft. tall brown bunny, throwing her arms around his (or her) legs.

The funny thing about the costumes is that the rabbits, hippos, Pooh bears and Piglets among them have limited vision—and they often don’t see the children who stand at their knees, arms outstretched.

(They’re also supposed to be mute.)

An owl nearly bowls Ruby over.

The frog barely catches her before there’s a tumbleweed of green and pink.

We spend a good half hour circling the outside walls of the castle, until Ruby has hugged each and every character at least once, sometimes twice.

She walks up to each one without hesitation, arms spread, expecting the same in return.

How many public places are there where strangers and children can embrace?

Even teachers refrain from initiating hugs.

And this is all she wants from Peter, from the dwarves, from Tiger, the gingerbread men, and Eeyore.

Simple, body-to-body contact.

No words.

No candy.

A hug.

When I was a teenage lifeguard, there was a little girl Katie who lived at the trailer park down the street and who came to swim each day with her siblings—but never with a parent.

My first encounter with Katie was when she was three, reclining back in a stroller while I refused to let her and her 8-year-old sister into the pool without adult supervision.

An argument ensued.

I refused to budge.

Katie leaned forward, looked me in the face and said, “You’re a bitch.”

I did not know this word even registered in a 3-year-old’s vocabulary.

They found a cousin to pose as an old-enough babysitter after that, and thus began a six-year hot-cold relationship with this dull-brown-haired child.

Some days, she would climb into my lap, this skinny mass of scraped-up legs and goosebumps wrapped in a towel—so in need of human comfort.

I never denied her this.

No one could.

And some days, she was a bullet of profanity.

On a misbehaving afternoon, when a fellow lifeguard tried to remove her from the pool, she kicked him in the shin and bit him on the arm, breaking the skin.

We suspended her for a week.

Seven days at home was a bitter punishment, more than we wanted to know.

And still, when she returned, we gave her the hugs she asked for—knew she needed them more than we needed to maintain an image or rules.

I am thinking of Katie when Ruby holds on to piglet and won’t let go.

I wonder how many of Katie’s hugs in childhood came from me, and how many arms of men she’s submitted to in the ensuing years.

Adults must now dress up as furry animals to appear harmless.

Mickey Mouse appears.

He poses with Ruby, fixes her hat over her ears.

She’s grinning; my ringless fingers are getting cold from all this picture taking.

Ruby has already moved on to dance with the frog and the Gingerbread man when I turn to find Mickey reaching out for me, pulling me in for a hug.

Except it’s more of a body hug.

He cups a gloved hand to my head so he can whisper in my ear, “Beautiful.”

Before I have time to process more than a grin — because this is how I respond when I’m unsure of how to take something — he’s gone, into a crowd of children.

Leaving me to wonder if he was referring to Ruby.

Or if he assumed this babysitter for a day was a MILF.

If it was some man just paying compliment, or some man taking advantage of an anonymous mouse head.

The rest of the morning, the most repeated phrase from Ruby is, “Mickey Mouse was my favorite … because he fixed my hat.”

I only nod, “Yup.”

My focus is on Mickey’s frozen features, raspy voice, and that single word in my ear.

This is how we got to where we are.

This is why parents freak out at the smallest things.

I have no idea who Mickey was—or what his intentions were.

I have promised myself I will not jump to conclusions based on a single word and a semi-embrace, or rather, I won’t put those conclusions on paper.

Maybe, in the hoards of married couples and children, I needed some sort of validation that I was not the same.

Maybe I just needed a hug.

All I know is that a few hours later, Mickey Mouse (or some non-Disney-sanctioned version of a mouse) showed up at the Winter Carnival Parade, wearing this disco-dancing getup.