When did you meet Mickey?
1973
Where did you meet him?
Family friend
Memory of Mickey
Mickey had a gift for talking to and listening to kids. He never talked down to them, never condescended.
I cannot express enough what a gift that was to the shy, dorky, awkward kid I was.
My earliest Mickey Memory: when I was still in elementary school, my parents had left me at the Nardo’s so they could go do some Mysterious Adult Thing That Was Beyond My Ken. I had brought a couple of library books with me, and prepared to hole up in a corner and read, as I often did when left to my own devices. I’d been reading for just a few minutes when Mickey said, “Let’s make potato chips! Come on.” I was amazed – I’d never heard you could do that at home, so I went. For the next hour or so, we sliced potatoes and dropped them in hot oil, then salted and ate them while they were still hot and crispy.
My parents tried, but couldn’t always connect with me about my passions. I had interests very different from theirs, so sometimes I felt I was speaking another language when I tried to share the excitement I had for things like comic books, D&D and the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Mickey was an adult that I could talk to about those things without feeling like a weirdo. Given the bullying I experienced in elementary school, that helped me overcome a lot of the anxiety I suffered as a kid and be a little more fearless than before.