Well, my mom has this obsession with all things "Ricky" related, and so on our trip to Dshitneycopyright™ World, we HAD to see Ricky's house, and thus see Ricky Rat himself! Personally, I was much more interested in seeing Marty Mallard, but we had already gone to the House of Scary Jokes about thirty times, so I was willing to give in here.
By this point, we had already seen a few scattered princesses and other cartoons-turned living, (mostly via giant, scary foam heads) but we had not yet seen the man/rat himself.
...We had, however, seen an old cartoon of him using a living cat as a musical instrument. That... bothered me. ... A lot.
So, we went in and took the tour of his home. I felt like I was truly invading the life of this cartoon character, as we looked at his answering machine, and his bed, and his refrigerator. It felt like we were doing something wrong and illegal. I decided that this tour was teaching me bad things. I enjoyed this a lot, and then felt even worse. My little guilt rattled brain could only take so much.
Well, if there's one thing Dshitneycopyright™ World taught me, it's that I have an irrational fear of most costumed, foam-headed people. Regular people in costume, no issue, though I do often find them intimidating unless I am also in costume. But giant foam heads??? Oh HELLLL no. This is why I can't handle going to sports events. While I love seeing people beat the shit out of each other for the sake of a game, I can't take the mascots. I don't know why. I just... don't... like mascots.
In any case, we got to Ricky Rat, and my mother (who must have been at least forty five-ish at the time) ran up to Ricky to sit in his lap for a photo.
Now, my mother is small and looks drastically younger than she is, but this was still a little odd, if not totally humiliating.
The man who was taking the picture looked to me and spoke to me as if I was younger than I was. I take after my mother, so I'm used to this. Usually once I've spoken, whoever is speaking to me understands my age.
It worked for this case too... but not in the way I was hoping for.
The man with the camera asked me if I would like my picture with Ricky Rat too!!! I responded with my arms folded and a parental chuckle. I then decided to joke (TERRIBLE PLAN! THE RAT HATES JOKES!!! NEVER DO THIS!!!!!) and say, "Ha! No thanks. I'm waiting to see Marty Mallard!"
The room...
went silent...
and cold.
The man with the camera looked at me and looked back at Ricky. Finally he spoke with an awkward and afraid "Haaa... I think that, uh, Melissa Mallard might have a problem with THAT! Haaaah...."
I thought for perhaps a millisecond at most before I shot back with, "I don't want to DATE him! I just wanna say 'hello'!"
It was then that I heard the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP and felt the slow beat through the floor. It entered my feet and crawled up my spine as I suddenly understood the dread which had been all over everyone else's skin.
My mother was still blissfully unaware, happily standing next to Ricky, wearing a shit-eating grin because OH MY GOD IT'S RICKY RAT AND THIS IS AWESOME!
Ricky was standing, arms folded, stomping his giant, yellow foot. While his face still held that smile, his body posture was VERY unhappy.
I had displeased the god-rodent.
For the rest of the trip, the only characters we could find in the vast wasteland that Dshitneycopyright™ World had become, were Dip and Dot (they were EVERYWHERE like little spies...), The Mad Hatsalesman, Street-Rat Boy, and Retardy. So, the only people who would talk to us were naked people I assumed were spies, a crazy person, an outlaw and... Retardy.
We even went to Marty Mallard's boat house. He was nowhere to be found. I am still convinced that, as punishment, the powers of Dshitneycopyright™ World were keeping him from me.
For a few months, this is what I pictured when I thought of Dshitneycopyright™ World:
Well, once our time (and money) was spent, we realized that we had another day to kill. This was when my mother decided to take me to what we'll call "Tropical Cyclone Lagoon".
A few things happened there, but what reeeeaaaaalllly stands out for me was the wave pool, followed by the "please don't sue us" station they called first aid.
The wave pool had "realistic sand!" This was, in actuality, bumpy cement.
When the far too strong current of the wave pool pushed me and my mother, with our tiny little frames, we balled up and went smashing down on the fucking "realistic sand" bullshittery.
We then rushed over to first aid, where they gave us Band-Aids and free ice-cream. The movie Pocahontas was about to come out, (I can say her name because she was a real person, and not a Dshitneycopyright™ concoction.) and so my ice-cream bar had her on the wrapper.
To my dismay, the ice-cream was just plain vanilla with a chocolate coating, and no shape of the character or imprint was to be seen.
Then, my little brain started going. I decided that Dshitneycopyright™ and the people of Tropical Cyclone Lagoon were terribly racist, and that they were trying to get me to subconsciously understand that what the white man did to Pocahontas was okay (I had read the book) because, clearly, she was really white on the inside.
So, yeah. My assumption that Dshitneycopyright™ was racist back in the day was not from watching any of the old cartoons, or even from Dshitneycopyright™'s actual life and views on anything... No.
It was due to ice-cream.
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