Hank McCoy (Before the Fur)

I know that the internet really doesn’t need another "look at the witty conversation I had that many people, wittier than I, have had and had better" post. But I can’t help it- this just strikes me as funny. So I’m going to post this.

My friend and co-worker (who will here on be referred to as V. in this post) and I were discussing being supervised. Long story short- V. implicated that her supervisor (here on referred to as D.- eating lunch with us at the time) had discussed the possibility of having V. come to work wearing, strangely, a Disney-character related costume. It was a Halloween kind of thing- I forget the exact context of how this idea/joke came about as a running gag between them.

I asked V. what kind of costume she might wear. She implied that she wasn’t sure, but that it was certain to be of the feminine-Disney variety. I inquired if V. meant ‘magical Disney princess/mermaid’ Disney feminine. V. noted that, in fact, she and D. had discussed her arriving to work as one of the ‘female counterparts’ of the Disney characters.

This led to us discussing the nature and names of said counterparts.

Who are- as we all know- truly abysmal and soulless role models for young women. After all: they wear far too much makeup, have no discerning personality characteristics other than moderate irritability with and high fixation on their male partner and are essentially vacuous re-copies of the male Disney characters (who, while we’re on the subject, didn’t exactly sport the kind of depth of personality you’d expect in the great American novel or anything). So yeah, Minnie- we dug deep and came up with Daisy’s name. I was certain that I remembered there being some kind of lounge-singer-chipmunk love interest for Chip and Dale, although- true to form- she was nameless. And that was about it.

At this point, the subject turned to Goofy and his evident lack of a female companion.

Eagerly, I pointed out, that Goofy must HAVE, in fact, been involved with some Goofy-as-a-woman doppelganger, as his ultimate fate was to father a child and raise him a single parent. D. and V. hesitated. V. commented that I may have been projecting my own unwanted future circumstances onto Goofy and that she had no idea what the hell I was talking about. D. asked me for my source.

Quick to explain myself, I steered the conversation towards triggering V. and D.’s latent visceral memories of the mid nineties afternoon Disney experience- Ducktales, Darkwing Duck…I was a pretty hardcore Tailspin fan. I may have even sang a bar or two of the Gummy Bears theme song (D. is always insisting I sing in conversations like this. And she is, technically, my superior at work.).

This, of course, led us to digress into a few off-topic venues. V. observed that the Baloo and other Jungle Book characters were just all over the damn place in the selection of Disney films. And I dazzled V. and D. with my uncanny memory for the strange origin of ‘Gizmo-duck’, who originally appeared in a Ducktales mini-series, only to re-appear as part of the ‘Justice Ducks’ in Darwing Duck.

…dazzled.

But this was all just trivial discourse compared to the real issue on the table- during the tail end of this strange Disney renaissance, a show named Goof Troop had emerged. While never a big fan, I knew that the premise consisted of this: Goofy lived, as a single parent, raising his son. Zany adventures ensued. This of course begged the question: WHO had been Goofy’s ‘baby-mamma’? And WHAT had happened to their relationship/marriage that had led Goofy and his son to their present circumstances?

Whether Goofy had mated with a member of his own species became a point of debate. D. proposed the possibility that Goofy may have been involved with one of the other female Disney characters. V. commented that Goofy didn’t strike her as the kind who would be prone to infidelity. D. commented that it was the shy, unassuming types that could surprise you.

This theory didn’t seem to pan out; however, I mean, Goofy’s son looked like the same kind of dog-man-hybrid creature that Goofy appeared to be. This led us to assume that Goofy had mated with his own type of half-man half-animal creature. Again, briefly, we detoured to discuss the strange irony that Pluto, by some evolutionary twist, appeared to be just a dog- whereas Goofy had developed some kind of proto-Neanderthal like form.

The prospect came up that Goofy might reproduce asexually. Like maybe his son just sprang from his head kind of thing. This was quickly dismissed as unlikely. But I have my concerns about this theory, to this day.

Ultimately, the general consensus was that Goofy’s spouse, while never depicted, probably shared the same genotype and phenotype as Goofy. But for some reason, was never put on camera. This left us, again, to question what had happened in their relationship. The best I could must was this- maybe it had been one of those situations where it wasn’t really anyone’s FAULT, but it wasn’t working out, so one day Goofy was like "I’m not sure I can do this anymore," and his wife/life-partner responded “What do you mean??” and Goofy said something like “Look, I’m just trying to be honest, I think we might be in different places/need different things, and it’s just not fair to the kids to keep putting them through this…”

And so Goofy and his elusive companion had parted ways, but on these sort of semi-amicable terms that can only be a hallmark of adult, rather than adolescent, relationships. Hence, to this day, Goofy retains custody of his child but probably arranges visits with his ex-wife, or maybe double dates with her and people she’s seeing- stuff like that.

Well, I’m sure I’ll get wrecked for writing this column. But sometimes you just gotta do something different. Disney is a scary company for a lot of reasons, but tell me you still haven’t got a special place in your heart for that little era in Disney history? Even if it took some of the characters you had loved and, apparently, drove their lives forward in developmentally challenging ways.