disney

Braving Disney

Reggie Jones approaches the entrance to a ride called Dinosaur with his usual trepidation. We've been at Disney World for three days on a fifth-grade class trip, and Reggie, one of three boys I am chaperoning, has refused to board many of the rides. He's almost 11, but he frightens easily. The other boys have teased him mercilessly for his lack of bravery.

In a few hours we will be driving home to Washington. So Dinosaur is Reggie's last shot at redemption -- his last chance to conquer his fears. I give Reggie the push I think he needs, assuring him that Dinosaur won't scare him. The ride, I say, will remind him of a museum, boring and safe.

At first, Reggie seems content to stand in line for this supposed museum ride. Then he finds a crumpled brochure on the floor. He opens it to the last page and sees a photograph of an animatronic tyrannosaurus about to make snack food of some tourists. Reggie pulls off his baseball cap and runs his hand over his hair. His cheeks droop. "This is the same ride we're going on?" he asks, pointing to the picture of the screaming tourists. "That's going to be us, isn't it?"

Reggie reads the brochure and learns that this ride has been designed to thrill humans with giant fake reptiles who attempt to eat people. "This isn't a museum," he says accusingly.

On the morning of his departure for Florida, Reggie wakes to the smell of sausage and eggs. His mother, Regina Thompson, is cooking a farewell breakfast in the kitchen of their Oxon Hill home. Reggie should be feeling overjoyed -- he's never been to Disney World before -- but, as he sits down to eat, he tells his mother that he doesn't feel right.

"I don't deserve this trip," he says. She tells him that he'll be fine. He has a suitcase of new clothes, extra batteries for his Game Boy, disposable cameras and $40 of spending money, more cash than he's ever been entrusted with.

"You're just nervous," says Thompson, 40, who works three jobs -- security guard, caterer and stadium usher -- to make ends meet. She, too, feels slightly uneasy. She's a protective parent -- to a fault sometimes, she admits. Why? "Because he's my only child. I don't have anybody else," she says.

Reggie has never traveled far from Washington or his family. Several summers ago, as an alternative to day care, Thompson sent her son to live with an aunt on her farm in Virginia. Reggie didn't want to go and vividly remembers the homesickness he felt.

After he and his mom moved to Oxon Hill two years ago, he was a target of neighborhood bullies. Several times a "gang" of children, as Thompson describes them, roughed Reggie up on the five-minute walk between his home and Valley View Elementary School, where he was a fourth-grader. One boy even threatened to get his father's pistol and shoot Reggie. Alarmed, Thompson no longer allowed Reggie to be outside without supervision. His grandmother started driving him to school each day.

Around the same time, an acquaintance began to praise a charter school called KIPP DC: KEY Academy that had recently opened in nearby Southeast Washington. The acquaintance spoke of discipline at KEY that a drill sergeant could admire. Bullies weren't tolerated there. It sounded like the kind of school where Reggie -- and his mother -- could find peace of mind. Reggie was eligible to attend because his father, who shares custody with Thompson, is a District resident.

KEY Academy is affiliated with San Francisco-based KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), a nonprofit organization that has helped open 30 public middle schools in low-income communities across the country. KIPP schools emphasize hard work and discipline. Students are in class from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. They have a minimum of two hours of homework each night. They attend a mandatory enrichment program 20 Saturdays a year and a three-week summer session.

Peer into KEY classrooms, and you will see students sitting up straight, their eyes bolted to teachers. The order at KEY, as with all KIPP-affiliated schools, has been carefully constructed and nurtured, in part, with a lavish promise: free trips.

Students who meet the school's expectations -- both academic and behavioral -- earn as many as 40 points, or "dollars," per week. Dollars are tabulated in a weekly paycheck that is deposited into a bank account, actually a spreadsheet in the office. Students spend these funds on supplies at the school store, but what the students truly covet, the crown jewel of rewards, is the year-end trip. If a student grosses at least $800 over the school year, he or she has earned a place on the class trip. The trips cost students nothing, thanks to the school's fundraising efforts, which account for about 26 percent of KEY's budget. Each class goes someplace different: fifth-graders, Disney World; sixth-graders, rafting and camping in North Carolina; seventh-graders, New York City. Next year, when the school reaches full size by adding eighth grade, KEY hopes to send its oldest students to California.

Beyond serving as a reward, the trips also have another purpose. "One reason we do the trips is to increase exposure," explains KEY Principal Susan Schaeffler. "We want the kids to go to competitive high schools and to schools that are out of their community. It's really important they have the same experiences as the kids they're going to go to school with. We want them to have been to Disney World. We want them to have gone camping, been to New York City. Those are experiences that most kids have an opportunity to do, especially ones at your top boarding schools."

Reggie's fifth-grade year at KEY was, as hoped, bully-free. He made a few friends and no one threatened to shoot him, which is not to say that he became Mr. Popularity. But he did his homework, respected the rules and slowly earned his $800 and a place on the Florida trip. (Many of his classmates couldn't say the same. In a gender-balanced group of 80 fifth-graders, 45 students qualified for Disney World; only a dozen were boys.)

Thompson wants Reggie to go to Disney. It is important, she knows, that her son experience the world beyond the blanket of her protection, although the idea of actually launching him into that world unsettles her. Nevertheless, she hugs Reggie goodbye and promises to call him every night.

"I didn't want to leave my mother," Reggie will later say. "I'd never been that far [from home] before."

In his sneakers, Reggie stands a fleck over five feet. He wears khaki pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with the school's motto: "No Shortcuts. No Excuses." I meet him for the first time as we prepare to board a motor coach for the overnight drive to Florida. A friend of mine who teaches math at KEY has recruited me to be one of 12 chaperons on the trip. I am in charge of supervising Reggie and two other boys.

Another chaperon decrees gender law aboard the bus. There will be no mixed seating. These kids are approaching the age of hanky-panky, she says, and nothing would be worse than a scandal. The girls sit at the back of the bus; the boys sit toward the front. The teacher erects a barrier between the two sexes by filling a row of empty seats with jumbo-size bags of chips. It's the potato curtain.

Reggie sits opposite me and one row back. Behind me sit my other two wards-for-a-week. Across from me sits a fellow chaperon, Tom Brown, the school's health and phys ed teacher, whose laugh fills the bus like a bass drum.

As the bus departs, Brown stands to deliver a message. "For the rest of this trip, whenever we leave a place, we're going to sing . . . Na-na-na-na. Na-na-na-na. Hey-hey-hey. Goodbye." Dozens of squeaky voices join in, arms waving adios in rhythm. "Hey-hey-hey. Goodbye."

A bit later, Brown apologizes to the other adults on the bus. The children are still singing. It's the girls, mainly: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "I Believe I Can Fly," "Old MacDonald." The boys are mostly quiet, until Reggie, for no apparent reason, stands up and bleats out: "A hundred bottles of milk on the wall, a hundred bottles of milk. Take one down. Pass it around . . ."

Along the way, we stop at Duke University in Durham, N.C. We're here, ostensibly, to eat dinner at a McDonald's. But really we're here so that the kids can get a taste of a concept that KEY Academy relentlessly preaches: college.

When Reggie steps from the bus onto the green lawns and stone walkways of Duke, he begins indiscriminately snapping photographs. He's already used one disposable camera on pictures inside the bus. I warn him that at this rate he's going to be out of film before reaching Disney World. Reggie's apparent delight at being on a college campus would please his mother, who dreams of his attending the U.S. Naval Academy. Reggie is less certain on the topic of higher education. He agrees in principle that it's a good idea, but his most concrete vision of the future involves following the path of his father and becoming a big-rig truck driver.

That night we sleep on the bus, in our seats. The sun rises. The adults wake up with contorted bodies and sour moods. The children, however, are sparkling from the novelty of swamps and palm trees. We're in Florida.

Tina must exist on a diet of corn syrup and helium. It's a crack past dawn, and already she's bouncing about like a small rubber ball. Tina is not a fifth-grader from Washington. She's a Disney employee and a "facilitator" for the park's Youth Education Series. Tina will lead us through the Magic Kingdom, one of five theme parks that make up Disney World, on a three-hour program titled "Disney's World of Physics: Properties of Motion." With her help, the children will study the science of amusement park rides.

"And what is your name?" Tina asks me, as if I'm one of the children.

"Mr. Currie," I answer. She pens my name on an adhesive label, dotting the "i" with a shape that vaguely resembles Mickey Mouse. She slaps the name tag on my chest, and off we go.

Tina troops us toward an area called Frontier Land, where the students learn about kinetic and potential energy by building miniature roller coasters with strips of plastic and Matchbox cars. Then they measure the height of an actual roller coaster using right-triangle geometry. Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect that children will behave studiously at Disney World. This is not the kind of place that encourages deep thinking. It's a temple of instant gratification and garish consumerism. There seems to be a candy store or gift shop on every corner. One boy begs me to let him break off from the group to buy a musket. "Sorry, no guns," I tell him. "Pay attention to Tina."

For the most part, the young people make an admirable, but doomed, effort to indulge Tina's enthusiasm and pretend they're in school. Eventually, though, one girl asks point-blank: "Tina, when can we go on the rides?"

Finally, the lessons are over, and we take a bus from the Magic Kingdom to MGM Studios. En route, we pass a billboard advertising a ride called the Tower of Terror. The ad shows a group of people screaming as if they face an imminent, bloody murder. This excites the boys. They say it should be our first stop at MGM. Reggie disagrees. His enthusiasm, which to this point in the trip has been almost manic, drains completely. "I ain't going on that ride," he says.

"Man, Reggie, you're a chicken," one of his classmates says.

At the entrance to the Tower of Terror, we hear shrieks coming from within the tower. For a moment, Reggie considers riding. Then, he freezes. The other boys are growing impatient with him. "Just come on. Quit being a wimp," one of them says. Tom Brown puts a hand on Reggie's shoulder and nudges him gently forward. Reggie's body sways, but his feet stay planted. Herbert, one of the other boys, offers to stay back with Reggie. The two boys sit on a bench in the shade near the ride's exit, while the rest of us board the ride.

When we return, Reggie and Herbert are grinning. They say they met and flirted with some 14-year-old girls from Georgia. Yeah right, the other boys say, demanding proof in the form of phone numbers. "We forgot to ask for them," says Reggie.

That night at dinner the children are retelling their trips through the Tower of Terror and praising the speed of the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, which Reggie also declined to ride. It involves an upside-down loop, an unacceptable danger, he explained. The boys laugh at him, and Reggie, feeling dissed, retreats inside himself.

On the bus the next morning I sit with him as we head back toward the Magic Kingdom. "It feels like I'm not supposed to be on this trip," he says. "I earned it, but somehow it feels like I don't deserve it." I ask him why. He doesn't know. When he said the same thing to his mother, she dismissed the feeling as nervousness, but I think it's more than that.

When we were at McDonald's the other day, he ordered Chicken McNuggets.

But he didn't complain when I accidentally handed him a cheeseburger instead. I realized my error only when another boy pointed it out. Yesterday, when we were eating ice cream, Reggie was the first child to say thank you. He kept lending out his Game Boy on the bus ride to Florida, even when the batteries were about to give out. He seems to have no sense of entitlement. His meekness and generosity make him endearing, but I've seen how hard it is for Reggie to assert himself. If only he were a little more selfish -- a little more like the other kids -- he'd realize that he deserves to be here as much as anyone.

Strolling through Disney World in June can be like swimming through soup, so I make the boys drink lots of water, which does nothing to cool their heat-swollen tempers. Reggie and my two other charges erupt in an argument. The origin of the dispute is murky, something about how much candy one can eat before vomiting. What is clear, however, is that Reggie is paying a price for having exposed his vulnerabilities to the other boys. My other two wards are acting like wolves; they've found the weakest prey and are tearing into him. I ask Reggie if he'd like to spend the day with Mr. Brown's group of boys. He agrees to the move.

Reggie excels on his new team. He actually chooses to ride two roller coasters, Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain. Unlike the Tower of Terror, with its amplified shrieks, neither of these rides advertises itself as a scary experience. Perhaps this is why he finds some success: He doesn't feel threatened.

So Reggie swaggers with confidence as we approach the next ride, the Haunted Mansion. He passes through the entrance and moves through the line without comment. We arrive in the dimly lit interior, where spooky noises go clank. Near the beginning of the actual ride, a ghoulish Disney employee, playing a haunted role, suggests with a burlesque cackle that we should all prepare to die. A commotion rises behind me. I turn to see Reggie struggling in the arms of another chaperon. He's trying to break for the exit sign, but the chaperon holds him back. "Let me go," Reggie shouts. She commands him, in essence, to quit being a wimp. Evidently, he's no wimp because he tears free of her grasp and bolts for the emergency exit. He passes the ghoulish Disney employee, who moans: "Scared to die, little man?"

I follow Reggie outside. "That ain't right," he says. "That man telling people they're going to die." We sit on a curb, watching crowds of people emerge from the Haunted Mansion. They all seem happy. Reggie, however, seems disgusted with himself and dejected, knowing that tonight he'll receive more barbs from his buddies. Just then it starts pouring rain.

Dinosaur is exactly the kind of ride Reggie loathes; namely, one whose purpose is to excite riders with the illusory threat of death or dismemberment.

Of the many decisions that Reggie will make in life, the one before him now probably ranks among the more inconsequential. If he turns and runs, his classmates will mock him for sure. But so what? That's life when you're a kid.

On the other hand, can't we all remember a minor trauma in childhood that continues to prick us as adults? I know, for example, that the memory of one high school bully still lurks in the recesses of my head, coming out every so often to whisper: Tyler, you're still a coward. So I'm both sympathetic and sad when Reggie decides not to ride Dinosaur. He turns tail and heads for the exit. I don't say anything. Despite my efforts to get him onto the ride, I'm not about to coerce him, especially considering his arm-flailing episode at the Haunted Mansion. But surely this could be, for Reggie, one of those small failures that will outlive the moment.

Reggie and I walk through the exit doors. Again we find a crowd of happy people, sandy-haired little boys and girls who've just finished riding Dinosaur, evidently without loss of limb or life. The evidence jars Reggie. However real his fear may feel, he's slowly realizing that it is rooted in a lie. There's nothing dangerous about this ride. He turns back through the exit and says he's going to ride.

We descend to the loading platform of Dinosaur, where Reggie watches the jeeplike vehicles pass by. Fear is still gnawing on his bones. It will not let him move.

Then a hefty woman with a sweet voice comes over. She's a Disney employee -- her name tag says Allison.

Allison asks Reggie if he has questions about the ride. He has many. How many dinosaurs are there? What kind? Do they touch you? What material are they made from? What's the safest seat in the jeep? How many minutes is the ride? Has anyone ever been hurt or killed on the ride? The more Allison explains, the calmer Reggie becomes.

"Do you want me to ride with you?" Allison asks. "I can tell you what to expect." She promises there won't be any surprises.

"All right," he says. The three of us step into a jeep. Reggie sits between Allison and me. He holds our hands, and the jeep lurches forward.

The ride is dark, turbulent and loud. If it weren't for the seat belts, we'd probably be hurled from the vehicle.

Robotic beasts keep leaping at us. My hand hurts from Reggie's squeeze, though he is not screaming or complaining. He keeps saying "What next?" to Allison, who warns of every motion and attack. Finally, the dinosaur pictured in the brochure -- enormous and red with a gaping mouth of teeth -- materializes from the darkness and tries to eat us. Our heads pass beneath its jaws, it seems, by mere feet, but Reggie doesn't even glimpse the horror. His eyes are sealed. Then unsealed. The ride is finished. When Reggie speaks, finally, his voice suggests some blissful place that I can only imagine. "It was awesome," he says.

We step from the building into a wash of sunlight. The other boys are all there. It's been more than 30 minutes since we separated, but Mr. Brown has asked them to wait.

"Did you ride?" someone wants to know. When Reggie answers yes, they swarm and hug him. The other boys have forgotten, at least temporarily, that they ever teased. And it's hardly a surprise that Reggie has forgiven them.

Tyler Currie is a regular contributor to the Magazine.

Sunday, November 9, 2003 Back