Under the orange tree
It was my wedding day, and we were gathered in the church for pre-wedding photographs. My bridesmaids seemed a bit a-flutter, so I asked them what they were talking about.
“Who is that guy who looks like Walt Disney?” asked Sara, who should know — she used to be a costumer for the Disney parks.
I couldn’t figure out who she meant, since Walt would have been perfectly welcome at my wedding but was kind of unavailable. They pointed to the lanky guy laughing with my father near the back of the church. Then I burst out laughing.
“That’s my Uncle Brian!” I said.
They laughed, and all agreed that he looked just like the Disney founder. This might have been inspired by the fairytale theme of the wedding, or the fact that they all knew I was a giant Disnerd, or that my son had apparently made the observation to them earlier in the day about Brian’s resemblance to the family patron saint. I had never thought about it before — it was just Uncle Brian, whom I’d known all my life — but once they said it, I couldn’t unsee it. I told him later at the reception, and once he finished laughing, he brought up a picture on his cell phone of his face next to Walt’s, because this happened to him all the time.
Growing up in Fullerton, Calif., which for the uninitiated is about two suburbs over from Anaheim, the Donald…
