When I was 5 years old, my Granny and Granddaddy Hodge took me to Disney World. It’s one of the earliest memories I have. I remember sitting on the curb on Main Street, U.S.A, watching with wonder and pure happiness as the parade passed. I can remember how hot it was. I don’t think the air conditioning worked in my Granddaddy’s car. We stopped on the way back to Alabama to trade in that car. My grandparents loved to tell this story. Little 5 year old me said to my grandfather, in front of the salesman as if my grandfather had something to hide, “Don’t forget to tell him about the air, Granddaddy.” This was a magical trip for me and formative in how I think about entertainment and business.
I was living in Mississippi at that age, so it was a long trip for me. After we made it back to Alabama, I’m sure we rested up at my grandparents house before they would have had to make the trip back to Mississippi, in that new car, to return me to my mom. I was lonely in Mississippi even at 5 years old. I had no family there. My mom worked during the day and spent her evenings with random men I never really met. I spent my days in daycare and my nights with comic books and action figures, trying to image a better world for myself. Disney World with my grandparents was that better world, a place where I could be safe and sing along with everything enormous and magical going on around me.
A few years later, my mom and I moved back to Alabama. We were getting threatening calls at our apartment, which I understand now were probably from one of those men I never met. This terrified my mom, and when we got back to Alabama, she had her very own come to Jesus moment. It didn’t last that long for her, but the lasting effect for me was that I ended up in the ultra-conservative, independent Baptist, private Christian school run by my Grandmother Catchings’ church.
Normal Southern Baptists are hellfire and brimstone people. Independent Baptists are all that and more. Women couldn’t wear pants. Men and boys alike couldn’t wear shorts in PE class. I had to wear a tie to school. My hair had to be cut with what they called “white walls” above my ears and collar. I attended this school from 10 years old until I was 14. At some point in all that, I had to take a class called “Man in Demand.” It was taught by the preacher of that church. In class one day, the preacher told me that I would never be a real man because I was being raised at home by a single mom. Never mind that I saw my dad regularly throughout the year.
This preacher who told me this was the second preacher to run this church while I was there. When he joined, he was welcomed as a softer, more empathetic pastor for this congregation. That’s independent Baptists for you.
This kind of thing happened often at that church and school. I’m not sure what year it was but somewhere in there, there was talk of going back to Disney World. My cousins on the Catchings side lived in Orlando, and we were talking about a visit. I was hoping we could go to Disney World. I mentioned this in school, probably unable to contain my excitement about escaping that terrible place, and one of the teachers told me that the church didn’t support going to Disney World. Apparently, it was a place of filth designed to indoctrinate young children into the ways of Satan. I was like, “but have you been there?” Then I spent the afternoon in detention for smarting off to the teachers.
It’s a fair question, though, even if I didn’t know it then.
I’m sure none of the teachers working at that school could have afforded to go to Disney World. I wouldn’t have been able to either if not for my grandparents Hodge. They saved their money well while working at the local textile mill. They invested in the stock market. They started their own rental property business in that small Alabama city. It allowed them to travel. It allowed me to travel with them. It allowed my dad to get an education and get out of that city, which ultimately did the same for me.
It’s easy to be against something you’ve never experienced, and it’s easy to make commerce the villain if commerce isn’t working for you. That’s really what religious boycotts are all about. It’s about that lack of access and all the feelings that go along with that: frustration, resentment, anger, and fear. It’s the emotions that drive the boycott, not any sort of rational thinking. It’s all the same—whether Target or Tesla, DEI policies or Harry Potter, Disney World or Artificial Intelligence—where one person sees a religious war to wage, there’s a 5 year old in Mississippi, or a 10 year old in Alabama, who sees opportunity and the possibility of a better world.