Good-Bye Recession

In spending three full days last week at Disney World, I have come to believe that the Disney people are quite brilliant. Not because of the dazzling shows or the elaborately detailed attractions executed with perfect precision.

No, the Disney people are clever as a fox because they know the mindset of the 5-year-old consumer. At the end of every attraction in Disney World, one must walk through a gift shop filled with elaborate and exorbitant Disney paraphernalia. And if anyone tells me their 5-year-old doesn’t want to buy EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE, I will know they are fabricating.

Actual conversation between Little Squirt and me, in the gift shop of DINOSAUR:
LS: (Picking up three-foot-long rubber dinosaur for $22) “Oh, Mommy, I NEED to buy him!”
Me: “Uh, no, Little Squirt, he’s too big. I’d have to buy an extra seat on the plane ride back. Pick out one of the smaller ones for $12.”
LS: (Picking up two smaller dinosaurs for $12 each) “I want to buy these two. The red one and the green one.”
Me: “I said you can buy ONE.”
LS: “I NEED two!”
Me: “One is all I’m buying.”
LS: (Throwing himself on the gift shop floor) “Pweeze, pweeze, pweeze, Mommy???”
Me: “No. Get up off the floor.”
LS: (Still lying on the floor, now blocking the aisle and kicking dinosaur stand) “But I WANT two.”
Me: (Beginning to feel mortified) “Little Squirt, please get up right now or we’ll leave and go back to the hotel.”
LS: (Still lying across the aisle, people now walking over him) “But Daddy needs a dinosaur, too. He told me.”
Me: “Daddy doesn’t need a dinosaur.”
LS: “YES he does. We have to buy two!”
ME: “Then let’s call him and ask.”
SH: (Super Hubs answering cell phone from his Orlando conference) "Yeah?"
Me: “Honey, did you want a dinosaur?”
SH: “Uh…..what??”
Me: “Little Squirt insists I buy him two dinosaurs because he says you want one. Is that true?”
SH: (Talking very slowly, as if mustering up extreme patience) “No, I do NOT want a dinosaur. And I need to get back to my conference.” (Hangs up cell phone)
Me: “Bad news, Little Squirt. Daddy says he doesn’t want a dinosaur. So I will buy you only one.”
LS: (Still lying in aisle. People having to step over him at The Happiest Place On Earth no longer look happy) “But Sissy needs a dinosaur! She told me.”
Me: (Admiring his persistence, yet feeling a latent homicidal urge) “Get up NOW! You have 10 seconds to pick out ONE dinosaur or we are leaving this store without ANY!”

We leave exactly 10 seconds later with one green dinosaur. And a similar conversation and posture occur in every other gift shop in all the parks.

So the sure-fire cure for a sluggish economy, I surmise, is to send all the 5-year-olds in the country on a shopping spree. That'll do it.