"The magic stops here," She said.

I’ve decided I’m not legitimate until I get a business card.

The kink in that plan is that no one has told me who the person is that purchases them for you. That’s the way it rolls in Academia. String after string after string all tied to some alleged piece of paper that started the whole trail…probably back in the last 1950s. The thing you don’t find out until later is that sometimes it’s not even really a piece of paper. It’s a person. Or a piece of a person.

And it’s quite an ingenious plan.

I’ve certainly never seen the person, the original paper, or even pieces of either one, so I’ve had no choice but to succumb to the idea of it as a mere legend. A myth of International Paper proportion, copier quality, 8.5×11, with a base weight of 20 pounds and/or the First Man to Invent Paper, who I think was like an Egyptian, maybe.

It’s a pervasive myth, either way, this paper trail. We all follow it.

And because we all follow it, there are, rules, you must abide by. Because if you don’t, you will get lost. Or, you will be made to be lost. Or, you’ll just lose, period. Trust me, the concept of loss is at its very core. (Also, never ask what the rules are).

I have had firsthand experience with this myth, this legend. Both in paper and person form. (And wouldn’t you know it, I have a story about it, too).

In my Disney Days, a paper trail involved real paper(s), handed in person, one to the other…at first, anyway.

Anything could be on that paper: a dismissal, a referral, a paycheck, a recipe, it didn’t matter. Only the Receiver ever knew because the paper was always accompanied by The Envelope. Embossed, shiny, slick, impenetrable, mouse-eared design…see, The Envelope was, when out of the Office, the same as the Office – it was to be feared and respected.

It was as if the Head Cheese had brought to you, Himself, and given it to you straight from the palm of his precious White Glove. Some people I worked with (the real hard-core Disneyanas), actually saved the envelopes as souvenirs, even the real crazy woman Janetta who had received a letter of dismissal. No lie.

One time, I hoped it was my friend Denny, who was in the letter, on the paper, anything. She was from Pittsburgh.

And she had disappeared, you see.

Ahem. I should explain. When one works at Disney, they become Disney. They speak the language (known as Disneyse), they wear the costume (known as the costume), and they never, ever point with just one finger…or touch a Guest. Ever.

You may find this hard to believe, but there are people in the Disney hierarchy whose sole job is to dress, every single day, as a Park Guest, and spy on all the employees. At any moment, they could “appear” and chastise you, dock your pay, stab a pencil in your toe, tell you how disappointed Mickey is in you, or point…and all in such a manner that no Guest would ever know.

They were a whole other type of Paper Trail, a whole other brand of paper. And Denny, poor sweet girl, was cut. And, thus, disappeared.

It had been raining, you see, and we were working at the GMR (the Great Movie Ride). The weather had involved lightning and thunder (a tree in the queue caught fire, briefly). People were aggravated, hot, antsy, impatient…but we weren’t. We weren’t allowed to be. We were the very picture of grace and civility.

I was anyway. Denny, though, had apparently reached her Pittsburgh limit. A Steeler, she was, of different kind.

I saw the flag way before she did. I’d spotted it turning off Sunset Boulevard, where the Tower of Terror sits. Behind the flag, as was the usual custom I came to learn, were about 300 Brazilians of all ages, and attitudes.

Brazilians do not go gently into any good theme park. You should know that. They, even more than displaced Bible Belters and Germans, have (and severely stick to) an agenda. It is almost there most important priority.

This particular line of Brazilians need el banero. The bathroom. I could hear that word, banero, being repeated time and time again, as they got closer. I was afraid if we didn’t get them to one, it might “put us on the news.” I couldn’t leave my current post; nor could Denny…so we waited. I waited, rather, she was already near golf-clap-fisticuffs over a stroller incident that involved two children, a gay man, and a woman in a wheelchair.

The flag approached.

As they stepped across Michael J. Fox’s signatured square of cement (down on the ground among many other celebrities in front of Disney’s replica of Graumann’s Chinese Theatre), they had a look of wild panic among them. I began to step toward them to head them off…I knew where the closest restroom was, but the Flag Man reached Denny, and grabbed her by the shoulders, to turn her around.

This was, I’m afraid, the fatal mistake.

We were wet from the rain, tired from the masses, fed up with the crowd control, and Denny, poor sweet thing, just didn’t have it in her to give any thing more.

She turned around, and he said ,”Tell me, now, where bathroom is found. I want a magic time and I have to go bathroom first.”

She, Denny, took her hand, wrapped her fingers around his wrist, removed his hand from her shoulder, and gently pushed him to exactly one arm’s length away.

“The magic stops here,” She said.

I took over at that point. I showed the line of 300 where the restrooms were, and when I returned, she was gone.  Incidentally, so was the gay man. Who I found out later was the spy. Poor Denny.

Nowadays, though, no such personal drama occurs in and along the Paper Trail until all the damage has been done, it seems: the computer freezes, the email stings, the CC: carbon copies. I suppose we really ought to put that term in quotes since the paper is all online. Or, at least, it’s supposed to be. Since we’ve moved to a paperless society, at the college, I’ve never had more paperwork on my desk, or in my desk drawers. I suppose that’s part of the transition; it’s one of the “kinks” we’re working on. 

That’s what they tell me.

Maybe by next week, it’ll even out…that is, if I’m still here…

Lord knows Walt’s got long arms, too.

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