I prefer watching VHS’s because you can rewind the tape and watch people walk around backwards.

I think my parents are concerned for my sanity and/or psychological fortitude.

Not like this is anything new, of course.

It’s just that when I get stressed or upset, I don’t cry (lie). I don’t go for the chocolate (little lie). I don’t stress bake (itty bitty lie – but don’t complain about that one because if you’re my friend it tends to benefit you and your stomach).

I break out the Disney movies.

Oh heck yes.

There is something fantastic about classic Disney cartoons. Here are 15 reasons why Disney classics are the best movies out there.

1. You can’t beat characters randomly breaking out into song every 12-15 minutes.

2. They are all between 90 and 120 minutes, which is short enough to keep my attention.

3. The pretty colours and happy music also keep my attention. Like shiny stuff.

4. That satisfying click a VHS makes when you have fully rewound it. Okay, maybe that isn’t a trait specific to solely Disney, but still, it can’t be beat by the streamlined whirring sound a DVD makes. These young whippersnappers (I tried to spell that “whipperschnappers” but apparently that is incorrect. I feel like my entire life up to this point has been a lie. And like I’ve probably looked stupid in the past spelling it the apparently incorrect way.) don’t realize what they’re missing.

5. Have you ever actually looked at the animation in classic Disney movies? I don’t mean the characters with their blocky colouring and outlines, I mean the hand-drawn backgrounds. The opening scene from Beauty and the Beast, where the “camera” pans through the forest in front of the Beast’s castle and the narrator starts to say, “Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young Prince lived in a shining castle,” is simply beautiful. The detail is exquisite.

6. Alan Menken is my hero. Musically, that man can do no wrong. He composed for almost all of what my generation refers to as “classic Disney.” I mean, who else would have thought to have African-American gospel singers tell the story of Hercules? I get goose bumps whenever I hear the closing score from Pocahontas (on the soundtrack, the track titled “Farewell”) – the way he makes the music move is just incredible. I – words can’t even describe. *musical giggle*

7. Howard Ashmann is a close second on the hero list. He was one of Disney’s head lyricists, and the peak of his work was Beauty and the Beast (though he died shortly before the movie’s release). I can gush about him and Alan Menken for hours, ask my friends.

8. Just once, when you’re all alone and no one can hear you, randomly break out into the opening lines of “Make a Man out of You” from Mulan. The pure epic is unbelievable.

9. Nostalgia. Those movies and the creaking noise the old plastic cases make when you crack them open and the way the weight shifts inside the tape and the bright blue screen you see when you hit “stop” all take me back to days before everything was so complicated and messy. For an hour and a half I can sit down, forget about my troubles and why I am upset and just be happy.

10. You can’t beat the pure hilarity of the lyrics.

11. “And, as I always say, if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it!” Win.

12. Pocahontas was the reason I actually had any motivation to do my summer chapters of APUSH.

13. These movies actually have MORALS. I know you may not be familiar with them, but hidden amongst the mild racist tendencies and flagrant political incorrectness are excellent ethical standards to live by.

14. Every time I watch a Disney movie I think about Disneyland, which, as we all know, is the happiest place on earth.

15. I need a 15^th reason because 14 is an insignificant number, 10 is too  small a number, and I can’t think of another 6 to make it to an even 20. SO, I just have to say that Disney movies are timeless. Cliché, maybe; false, no.

I love Disney movies. The end.

This is probably isn’t helping my case.