Why? Because We Still Like You~ !

Kids can be cruel !

Amplify’d from campaign.r20.constantcontact.com

In today's excerpt - The Mickey Mouse Club television show was cancelled in 1958 after three seasons, and almost all the Mouseketeers, who were pre-teens and teenagers, found themselves out of work and trying to reenter normal life. Very few received help from Disney or were able to sustain careers in the entertainment world, and most went on to lives filled with disappointment. Even returning to their former schools proved daunting:

"The clash between the [ex-]Mouseketeers' former selves still on television in reruns, and the teenagers careening toward adulthood who they now were, highlighted the larger conflict that would mar their lives for years to come: the idyllic '50s sensibility their screen images represented versus the hipper grown-ups they were trying to become. 'After a while it was a part of my life that I wanted over, and it just wouldn't die,' Dennis Day said in an interview. 'There were all those reruns, and people kept recognizing me.'

"This conflict first played itself out in the halls of the schools to which the Mouseketeers were hoping to return quietly and without incident. Kids in Karen Pendleton's seventh-grade class would ask her for her autograph, but when the guileless middle-schooler would give it to them, they'd tear it up in front of her.

Her classmates would say things like, 'Wiggle your ears and I'll give you some cheese.'

"Don Agrati, a tiny thirteen-year-old, acquired the nickname 'Mouse' the second he returned to public school and suffered from the same unoriginal - though still hurtful - teasing methods

Kids would sing 'The Mickey Mouse Club March' whenever he entered the cafeteria. 'I was in fights every day and I was just miserable,' he recalls. '

Author: Jennifer Armstrong Title: Why? Because We Still Like You Publisher: Grand Central Date: Copyright 2010 by Jennifer Armstrong Pages: 164-166 Read more at campaign.r20.constantcontact.com

 

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