It’s not a part of my childhood that I’m “missing.”
I don’t “hate everything Disney.”
I wasn’t “abused” by my parents.
I just haven’t seen "The Lion King."
Calm down, please.
Look, I get it. For a lot of people growing up, this historic Disney hit was a checkpoint in their young adolescence. Watching the film, or even hearing it’s mentioning, bring about memories of a simpler time – when worries were scant and finals were just something your older siblings had to make the whole house quiet for.
But that doesn’t mean your childhood has to be mine.
It’s not something I’ve actively brought up in a while. Sure, it was great for an icebreaker during those circled group therapy sessions our RAs made us do Freshman year. It always provoked a response – usually a chorus of melodramatic gasps with hands cupping agape mouths.
But lately, I’ve found this response to be increasingly negative. Instead of pure shock, I’m met with more disdain than usual.
“Why not?” a frat guy asked me in my core literacy class last week, face scrunched as if I had just handed him his own gym bag. “Is something wrong with you?”
And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Do you hate happiness or something?”
“How could you NOT like 'The Lion King?'”
“Are you not gonna show it to your kids?”
“I couldn’t IMAGINE my childhood without 'The Lion King!'”
As someone whose primary method of social interaction is sarcasm and a healthy dose of eye rolls, I think I have a good radar for differentiating irony from ridicule. Safe to say, after what has now been years of relentless haranguing, I find myself confronted with the latter. For a good amount of that time, I handled the teasing pretty well.
Now, however, I have to be honest with myself and everyone around me.
It has been gathered that only 15% of bullying in college is reported, and knowing the anxiety and emotional stress I have had to put myself through over the years – I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to go through that too.
Because most of the time it’s just not worth it.
Especially not for some dumb movie.
There are people out there who care about other stuff – stuff that matters, stuff that you can relate to and you don’t have to force yourself to say that you like it. With all of the jerks and bullies I’ve met at college, I can assure you I’ve met just as many people who I think truly value my friendship over some dumb film about rabid cats.
And no, I’m not afraid to say that anymore.
So this article is for two groups of people – the ones who made me feel like I couldn’t be who I was, and the ones who encourage me to be that person. Because that person is someone who is comfortable knowing what they like and don’t like. And I’ve grown to be comfortable with that part of myself because of this special, unbreakable group of friends I have around me.
So thank you, to my true friends – and to the ones who made me realize who those friends actually are.
"Hamlet" is a better read anyway.
