First Act as an Adult

Bag checking is always a fun process, most especially at an airport, luckily it was not quite the traumatizing experience at Disneyland, but it still is not on my top one hundred list of things I enjoy doing. After that we quickly found an open register and stood at the window. Wishing to deal with the birthday person first, I promptly handed the lady behind the window with the Mickey Mouse head shaped cut out my driver’s license and print out of my online registration of my birthday. She filled out a shiny ticket that, sadly, was not gold, but did say ‘It’s Your Birthday’ with Mickey on it and my name and date on the back. Then came the badge.

Oh the dreaded badge that made the long drive down to L.A. from Northern California worth it for my parents. It was a blue badge that said ‘Happy Birthday’ with a space underneath in which the ticket lady had written my name as large as possible. I am at least thankful she did not add any stars or hearts or any other things that I would not like. I put my driver’s license away and took my ticket and badge.

Strange enough the ticket lady said she could not get the tickets for my parents since they were paying with a credit card so we had to wait in a queue. There my mum and I got into a debate about wearing the badge. I did not want to, my mum knew it would bring me discomfort and told me I had to wear it.

I slowly put the badge on while my parents got their tickets, which we noticed went up in price from last year. We made our way to the ticket gate, my mum and I grabbed maps, and the first stranger (after the ticket lady) to wish me ‘happy birthday’ was there. The ticket checker (or whatever you wish to call him) told me this as I went through the gate, “Happy birthday, Princess.” My parents, I could tell, almost burst out in laughter at that and I grimaced but didn’t show that to the ticket checker.

Well after that spectacularly creepy wish of a happy birthday we were at last within the world of wonderful Disney.