Lost to the ages but clear in my memory is a news story about a Midwestern family with a broken refrigerator. They couldn't afford a new one, so their church friends came together to raise money for a replacement. This early example of crowdfunding worked: Everyone pitched in, working-class parents gave their hard-earned pay, their kids scraped the last coins out of their piggy banks, and in the end they raised just enough for a new appliance. But the family spent the money on a Disney vacation instead.
I have long struggled with this tale of a family that wronged its community. I recognize that taking charity and using it for something other than its intended purpose is at least flagrantly dishonest, and possibly criminal. GoFundMe has a whole fraud division devoted to ferreting out this kind of thing. At the time, I asked my law school friend for her reaction. "Fuck them," she said. "They should spend the next five years eating warm cheese sandwiches." No doubt there are many who would recommend harsher measures: Kick the parents out of the church, take the kids away, whip them in the streets, crucify them in the town square. But despite my gift for outrage, I can't get mad about it.
Two decades on, I am preparing my own family's pilgrimage to Disney World. I'm excited. Even to a hardened cynic, the place is paradise. Think of it in the abstract: Thousands of acres devoted solely to human pleasure. You spend all day moving from one gloriously fun thing to another. Parades happen spontaneously, Muppets serenade you from the rooftops, platoons of stormtroopers throw candy at you, everything is carefully orchestrated to cause a relapse of lost youthful ecstasy. Without sarcasm or irony of any kind, I believe Disney theme parks to be a crowning achievement of civilization, on par with the pyramids or the International Space Station.
All that joy is costly. If you haven't been to Disney for a while, you might not realize how damnably expensive the place has gotten. You expect to get gouged if you stay in one of Disney's resort hotels, but you might not expect an additional per person charge for certain rides after you've bought your ticket, or an exorbitant daily fee to avoid standing in two-hour lines for the top attractions. Clothing items start at 50 bucks, and if you don't have some ears or a shirt, you might as well have stayed home. Family meals can cost hundreds of dollars. The adult beverages alone cost around $15 each, and they are necessary expenses; parents must be partially anesthetized before the check comes. Sources put the average cost of a week's vacation for two “frugal” adults at around $4000.00, so you can imagine what it costs for a rather non-frugal family of five.
We forgive these abominable price tags because the rules governing time, space, and economics are suspended in the 42-mile stretch of Florida that belongs to the Mouse. The Disney empire works like the wedding industry in that it convinces consumers that they should spare no expense on this once-in-a-lifetime experience. And so when you hear the crack of plastic hitting the pavement, followed by the tug on your shirt from a pigtailed, sugar-crazed goblin who tearfully requests that you replace her broken $30 bubble wand for the third time, even if every parental instinct directs you to say 'no,' you still say 'yes.' You tell yourself that fifty dollars' worth of face painting is a good investment because it keeps your kids still for nearly ten minutes while you drink your $15 beer. You will buy ears, and more ears, and still more ears. Those who can afford this kind of unmitigated decadence must submit to the Mouse's version of reality. Those who cannot are excluded from the Magic Kingdom, cast into the lake of bad parents, a domain of wretched shades who wouldn't sacrifice a few months' earnings for their own flesh and blood.
This nether-realm is ever expanding. The trappings of Pleasure Island have long been out of reach for the working poor, even those intrepid enough to drive a barely functioning car the [x] hours it takes to get to Orlando, splurging at McDonald's a time or two on the way down, but not daring to stop for the night. Now the dwindling middle class is getting edged out too, as Disney prices increase and wages stay the same. More than 60% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $500 expense, and only about half of us take any kind of vacation at all.
Perhaps I struggle to condemn the refrigerator parents because in my own bleeding out for the Mouse, I, too, have betrayed my community. The money we are about to spend would be put to far better use on any number of causes. We could have stuffed it into the pockets of people who can't afford to eat, or can't afford medicine, or can't afford refrigerators. We could have alleviated some genuine suffering rather than pandering to our own transient, fickle wants.
This struggle is literally ancient. In the Gospels, there's a well-known story about a woman who rubs Jesus with an entire bottle of spikenard oil. That oil was worth about a year's wages - more than the cost of a visit to Disney World (adjusted for 2000 years of inflation). The apostles confronted Christ about it. There are a few different renderings of his response, but my favorite is Andrew Lloyd Weber's:
Surely you're not saying
we have the resources
to save the poor from their lot?
There will be poor always
pathetically struggling
look at the good things you've got!
We'd trust Jesus to do better, but here we see the all-time heavyweight champion of the poor unmistakably take food out of his constituents’ mouths. When tempted by an ephemeral opportunity for luxury, even He disappointed His community.
Then as now, it seems we must knowingly wrong one another to make life bearable. A poor preacher under the boot of the Roman empire is never going to get a jar of spikenard oil again. Parents who can't afford to replace a refrigerator are likely barred from Disney until long after their children are grown and sunk in their own debts. This is not because of any real scarcity; there is plenty in our day and age for both refrigerators and theme park passes, but for whatever reason, our game is zero-sum. Someone has to lose, and it can’t always be (the editorial) me. I can hardly blame someone who takes a windfall from God and uses it not for anything practical or charitable, but to enjoy something, if only for a week, a day, or an hour.
Still, merely recognizing this basic truth does not absolve me of my sins. For now, the best I can do is ask forgiveness. Forgive me Lord, for buying a $90 backpack in the shape of Donald Duck's head. Forgive me fellow Hoosiers, for maxing out my credit card on “drinking around the world” at EPCOT. Forgive me reader, for this Disney trip, and all the others. Forgive me, and refrigerator family, and whoever else has wronged you for the sake of their own gladness and joy.
I love this piece and have to say, I wasn’t sure I loved my little brother or not until I thought we were going to die together in the darkness of Space Mountain. Also, you look cute in mouse ears.