Gawrsh! Feelin’ Goofy

I often get asked who my favorite Disney character is, and I think usually people try to guess what it is before you even answer.  Of course I get a lot of, “Of I know, Mickey is your favorite character right?”  Nope.  Now I do love Mickey and it is mostly because he embodies a lot of Walt Disneys traits, especially since Walt created him.  But no, there is a character that I love more than Mickey.  Any guesses?

 

Yep Goofy it is!  Why Goofy?  Goofy to me just epitomizes youthful fun and exuberance. The poor fellow always has the best of intentions at everything that he does, but he still manages to mess things up and everyone around him knows he’s going to mess them up, but they love him so much, they just let him go.

Goofy actually started life as Dippy Dawg.  Walt seemed to have problems coming up with names for his characters.  Pretty much everyone knows that Mickey Mouse actually started out as Mortimer Mouse until Walts wife Lilly told him that name was dumb and hard to say, and everyone would love Mickey so much more.  She sure was right about that!

 

Disney has used Goofy is tons of ways.  In his early years, he was more than ready to show the world how to play sports.  He starred in “How to Play Football”, “How to Play Baseball”, “How to Play Golf”, and “How to Swim” amongst many other sporting titles.  Of course, he never taught you the right way to play, but his way always seemed to be much more fun than the regular way!

 

Later on in his career, Goofy moved on to showing the world how to take on different jobs, such as “How to be a Detective” and “Teachers Are People Too”.  These are just some of the funniest short animated features you can see.  Goofy really endures himself to you in the animated shorts and it is when I went back and watched these that Goofy truly became my favorite character.  Here is a link to “How to be a Detective” which is on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8jiwYuVXOs.  I hope you take a few minutes (it’s only 7 minutes long total) to watch Goofy at his best.  The truly funny thing about this animated short is, within the first 2 minutes you see people hitting each other with bats, shooting each other, even a hanging happens!  It brings you back to the days when cartoons were innocent fun even when depicting violence.  I also loved that Goofys name is Johnny Eyeball and he is reading a Mickey Mouse magazine right off the bat!  Also keep in mind this was created in 1952!  A full 16 years before I was even born!!

 

These days you can catch Goofy teaching folks how to hook up their complicated home theater systems, which he does with impeccable detail, and as always, totally wrong!  

Every time I see Goofy in the parks I always run up to him and shake his hand and get a picture with him.  Fun fact, my first Disney hat was not Mickey Mouse Ears, it was in fact a huge green Goofy hat with large droopy Goofy ears, and I wore it proudly!

Goofy will always have a very fond spot in my heart.  He just embodies the loveableness that is within everyone and more importantly, just pure goodness.  You could never be mad at Goofy because he means so well and he tries so hard.  Kind of sums up how I usually end up doing most things in my own life.  And at the end of the day, his name is goofy – funny to say and totally descriptive for him.

As always, thanks for spending a little time with me and I hope you’ll remember to be a little more patient with all of the “goofys” you have in your own life.  They always mean well!

See ya real soon!