Most people who go remember their first sight of Disneyland: I was in Paris, five years old and completely besotted by the recent Beauty & the Beast film. Millions of children make the pilgrimage to the corporate faery-tale shrine and almost all of them have the same reaction: its what doctors would diagnose ADHD for, I would guess.
Our early years are filled with so many of these moments of head to toe excitement - when jumping up and shouting just isn’t enough - that when you look back at it, childhood seems a lot better than it ever realistically could have been. Boys, especially, will run around and scream high-pitched noises so impassionedly that, if they were child actors who’d been given the part of somebody with a serious mental handicap, the Oscar would already be in the post.
‘AHHHHHHHHHHHHH I’ve got the new Arsenal shirt! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE A puppy! GGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Thurderbirds! It’s a simple life and, at that age, the complete capitulation of self-control is seen as ‘adorable’, ‘sooo cute’ and generally disgustingly endearing. Then, in the teenage years, its supposed to just go… vamoose till death us do die. It doesn't though.
At about 1pm on Sunday I received a supportive email from one of Britain’s most well-respected journalists. As well as complementing my writing, she signed out by predicting that, by next year, I’d be ‘making as much money from the media as [another well respected columnist] is’. For a poor and unemployed young writer that is what's called a 'good email'.
My immediate reaction on reading this was to gurn and shake like somebody on MDMA who’s just had the national grid’s entire annual output pumped right up his bum. ‘AAAAAAAHHHHHHKKKEEEEEAAAUUMZZ’ was the first word I managed before running around the house… If anyone had seen it I’d probably be locked-up or put on the X Factor or something.
I’ve been allowed into the newsrooms of two newspapers in my life and both experiences took a superhuman effort on my part. Obviously, wanting to be a journalist and everything, I was very concerned to come across as a world-wise and articulate kinda guy: ‘Are you following the situation in Nepal? Awful, Awful.’ In truth, however, the real effort was to stop myself screaming like one of those 15 year old Beatlemaniacs. In my appallingly over-excited brain the whole newspaper office is as staggeringly beautiful to me as any toyshop, football stadium or singing Liverpudlian ever was.
Surely i'm not the only over-18 who gets like this? Yet, in the era of reality TV, I would have thought I’d have seen another 22-year-old quiver with excitement in a strictly non-sexual way- but I don’t think I have: They just don’t look emotionally damaged enough to be believable. When he won Pop Idol, why didn’t Will Young start dribbling and knocking his head against Ant or Dec? I would have. And when it comes to 30, 40 or 50 year olds my ability to imagine them having similar ‘episodes’ falls apart even more.
Either (and I’m not counting this out) my emotional growth was stunted in some important way when I was six or there is a wonderful adult conspiracy going on. If the latter is true - and almost all adults have these uncontrollably happy moments - it means that when things go well for people then, like me, they're scampering off and going absolutely and utterly crazy for a few minutes without anyone else ever knowing.
This would mean that, when Obama won the Presidency, he more than likely ran into the toilet, put a towel in his mouth and started screaming and biting before he even had time to talk/gloat to John McCain.
Similarly, when Madonna’s fitness coach tells her that she hasn’t put on an ounce since her sixteenth birthday she must just start running up and down the stairs of her London home bursting into rooms and shouting ‘ha’ at anybody who happens to be about.
This is one conspiracy I really hope is real.
