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Friday, June 4, 2010

Letters from Home: Uncle Bud at Disneyworld

The latest in the series of unfortunate situations my family is all too familiar with. Enjoy...


~Alan


Dear son,

How are you? It’s been a while since we wrote. We’re doing pretty fair, but we had kind of a rough few days. I don’t remember if we told you we were going to Disneyworld for Memorial Day weekend, but we did. One of our church members, Madeline Vanarsdall, died about a month ago. She owned the Beauty Barn down there off of 196 and the Klassy Kuts over in Somerville. Apparently in her will she left a whole mess of money to the church, with one condition. Part of it had to be used to take the first and second grade Sunday school class to Disneyworld.

After that, the church could do whatever they saw fit with the rest. The will said that Madeline never got to go to Disneyworld herself (her portable dialysis machine would only run for a couple three hours before she had to charge it, and I guess they don’t have outdoor plugs down there) and since she never could go, she figured she could at least pay somebody else’s way. So last Friday afternoon we loaded up the church bus and took off. There was 11 kids and 5 adults.

Me and your daddy, Shirley and Jimmy Don McQuiddy, and your Uncle Bud. He says to tell you hi, by the way. He’s got him a job working in the body shop down at the Ford dealership. He’s a good man, but he’s just not quite all there. We didn’t expect he’d be much of a help with the kids, but he’s been wanting to meet Snow White ever since he saw her in the Ice Capades down in Selmer year before last (we didn’t have the heart to tell him it was just a group of students from the junior college) so we took him along to help drive. We were planning on staying the weekend and coming back on Monday, but we had a little situation come up.

Once we got all the tickets and got everybody inside, Bud was about to come unglued wanting to meet Snow White. So we decided to let him go his own way and the other four adults would tend to the kids. That Disneyworld is something else, I tell you what! We stood in line for the longest time to get on some ride that wasn’t nothing but some tea cups spinning around. I had to go to the bathroom after that, and the line for the bathroom was near about as long as the one for the rides.

After I got out, we were deciding where to go next when a couple of security guards come tearing past us with their little walkie talkies just blaring. They said something about an incident with Snow White. We figured it must have had something to do with Bud, so we told the McQuiddys to watch the kids and we went off to see if we could find out what was going on. It’s hard getting through that place just walking. I don’t know how them security fellas was able to run flat out like they were. It took us a few minutes to find the commotion, but when we did, it was a little worse than we expected.

There was about ten or twelve security folks standing around, and Uncle Bud was on the ground on his belly with his hands cuffed behind his back. His face was red as a beet and he was yelling at the top of his lungs, “That ain’t the real Snow White!! Get your money back! That ain’t the real Snow White!!” There was a couple of dozen little girls there all dressed like Snow White, and the louder Bud yelled, the more they cried. They finally had to mace him to shut him up. We pushed through the crowd and explained who we were and that Bud was about two fat ladies short of an opera, and they let us through.

Snow White was sitting over on a bench crying and talking to one of the security fellas, and a couple of them little midgets what lives with her were standing off to the side. The security folks were asking how it happened. Apparently Bud was standing in line to meet Snow White with all them little girls. He was the only adult there without a kid. When it came his time to talk to her, he asked her to sign his t-shirt, which she did. While she was signing, he told her how much he enjoyed seeing her at the Ice Capades in Selmer.

When she told him that she didn’t ice skate and had never been to Selmer, he started putting two and two together—only, in Bud’s mind, two and two don’t always equal four—and he figured she was a fake. That’s when he started yelling that she wasn’t the real Snow White. He kinda got in her face a little bit and one of them midgets told him to back off. Now Bud don’t take real kindly to being told what to do, especially by a midget in pointy shoes. So he shoved the little fella down and his big old fiberglass head thunked against the concrete.

Then another one of them midgets shook his little pick at Bud, and Bud told him he was going to “break that handle off in his ass.” The little guy took a swing anyway, but he missed. Then Bud rared back and smacked him square in the head and dropped that midget like a sack of dirt. Snow White screamed, and then all of them little girls screamed and scattered like little blue and yellow cockroaches. That’s about the time the security folks got there. They tackled Bud and handcuffed him and he was hollering about Snow White the whole time.

The security folks were nice enough to let us ride in their little golf carts over to the security office with them. We were a sad looking little parade, let me tell you. Snow White, with her makeup running and eyes red from crying, them two little midget fellas with their big old dented heads, and Bud, snot-nosed and watery-eyed from being maced. When we got to the office, your daddy asked if he could have a minute with Bud before they called the real police to come get him. He was still mouthing off about how he was going to sue Mr. and Mrs. Disney for false advertising.

Your daddy went over to him and whispered something in his ear. Bud looked up at him and asked if he was sure and he nodded. Bud’s face turned white as a sheet, and all of a sudden he was apologizing to everybody in security, Snow White, and even the midgets. He told them how bad he felt for what he did and asked if there was anything he could do to make up for it. He even offered to pull the dents out of them big fiberglass heads. After talking it over, the park decided not to charge him, but they did ban him from the park for a year.

When we got back to the hotel, I asked your daddy what he said to Bud in the security office that made him change his tune so quick. He said he’d just told him that this was the real Snow White, not the one in he’d seen in Selmer. After all, why would the real Snow White be in Selmer when she lives at Disneyworld? Your daddy’s a pretty smart old man. Well, I guess I ought to run for now. You take care of yourself, and we’ll see you later.

Love,

Mom & Dad



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