See you real soon...

(Photo from IMDB)

When I was a kid, the Disney Channel didn't suck. The Mickey Mouse Club, Kids Incorporated, Dumbo's Circus, Welcome to Pooh Corner, all kinds of quality program that actually related back to Disney.  In the evenings, similar to the Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite format, they would play Vault Disney. It was a sorted collection of programming from days gone by. A lot of black and white shows and movies, old Disney specials, world of color....everything a budding young Disney fanatic could hope for to help them become the  crazed individual who sits here writing this blog today. It was through Vault Disney that I fell in love with the original Mickey Mouse Club.

I'd already become a fan of the "New" Mickey Mouse Club. Ryan Gosling sucked me in at the tender age of eleven. I had known a little about the old show before I'd started watching it late at night when I couldn't sleep. I mean, who didn't know that theme song? And I'd been introduced to (and started falling in love with) a certain infamous mouseketeer as a very little girl when my mom rented Babes in Toyland for me.

Annette won me over just as she had so many before my time. Seeing her sing and dance, always smiling and making people smile, I wanted to do that. I wanted to be her. I suppose it's growing up in theater, but musicals have always made me light up, and when I was that age, they weren't exactly popular. I wanted to be able to go back to that time and do the things she did.

I was ten years old when Annette announced that she had been diagnosed with MS. I didn't know what it meant at the time and I couldn't really wrap my head around the whole thing. Over the years, as more and more "Disney starletts" have come out, it's made me really long to have someone like Annette back. She was talented and lovely inside and out.

My heart broke today when I heard of Annette's passing. I lost a hero, but I'm just glad that she's at peace. A friend said to me today that they may not believe in Heaven and Hell, but that if there's somewhere that we go after we leave this earth...he's sure that Walt is there waiting for her. I like to think of it that way too.