Ariel - 4K (Patreon)

Would you believe that I didn't watch the Little Mermaid until I was well into my forties?

In November of 1989, when Ariel and Sebastian were singing their way across the seven seas, I was a newly married nineteen year old recruit in my first week of advanced individual training for the U.S. Army.  Needless to say, watching some Disney flick would have been next to impossible and...lets be honest here...quite frowned upon.  A month later and I was on my way to first unit assignment in Germany....and a whole new set of problems.

After arriving in Europe I had other priorities such as the real possibility of being sent to Panama for Operation Just Cause, but settle for picking up the pieces from the failing eastern block states instead.  Yes, communism was still a thing back then.  Throw in a little Desert Shield / Storm action a year later, a failed marriage, and copious amounts of drinking and womanizing thereafter...and I was still no closer to watching an animated movie inspired by a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Flash forward a decade or so and its 2004.  I'm forty-four, a few months away from going on my seventh (and final) combat tour, and had just met my (future) wife.  Her four year old daughter had already seen The Little Mermaid a dozen times or more, whereas I...other than watching a few random clips of Horatio Thelonious Ignacious Crustaceous Sebastian (yes, that is his full name) belting out 'undah dah sea' on the infotainmentwebnet...had not.

Some time in early '04 her mother and I had just returned from dinner and a movie when in runs my (future) step-daughter waiving her favorite VHS tape over her head....and wouldn't take no for an answer.

She's in college now.  The now well-worn tape sits in my office display cabinet, wedged between equally well-worn copies of A Goofy Movie (wife's favorite) and Transformers: The Movie (my favorite).

Download it here.

Original Sketch by Unknown

Colors by Phillipthe2