How I have Peter Pan Syndrome in a Bad Way

Gail Carson Levine, author of one of my favorite books, Ella Enchanted, was hired by disney to write a Disney Fairies book called Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg.  What makes her cool is that the last part of the dedication went something like this, "and to my first boyfriend, Peter Pan".  On the back jacket flap she went on to say she thought Wendy was an idiot for wanting to leave Neverland ( I love this woman).  Well, my dear friend Gail, you got one thing wrong and one thing right.  Peter wasn't your first boyfriend.  He was mine, you home wrecker.  But you are so right about Wendy.  She was an idiot.  Who the crap doesn't want to live forever in eternal youth with a vine clad Jeremy Sumpter? ...I mean Peter.  Really though, how cool is Neverland?  Are pirates and mermaids just not good enough for you Wendy?  Huh?  "Oh, no thanks Peter, I'd rather not spend my days flying around rainbows and sunsets.  It's just not for me."  Idiot.  Look Wendy, I let myself grow up and it's not all its cracked up to be.  It's definitely not rainbows and sunsets.  I can't really blame Tink for trying to off her.

Lets just take a moment to talk about our favorite Peter Pan movies.  Is there a bad one in the bunch?  No!  because nothing connected to Peter Pan is bad.  Nothing.  And there are so many wonderful British actors in them.

1. Good ol' classic Disney- The animated one.  The first intro I had to my flying boy in green tights.  I blame this movie for the Peter obsession.  My father blames this movie for me being able to talk him into dressing up in the green tights and going trick-or-treating with me as Peter and Tink when I was in Kindergarten.  Yeah, I have the best dad ever.

2. Hook:  Did ya'll know that the pirate that gets put in the boo box is Glenn Close in some fantastic pirate costume and makeup?  It's true.  IMDB it if you don't believe me. Best movie trivia ever.  Seriously, IMDB it and read it all.

3. Peter Pan 2003.  Jeremy Sumpter and Rachel Hurd-Wood give each other more chemistry filled looks than than Julia Roberts and Richard Gere did in any rom-com I have ever seen.  PS, my copy of this movie is missing.  Whoever borrowed it, I want it back!

4. Finding Neverland- Johnny and Kate.  Why are we not all best friends?  Oh yeah, it's because you are to busy making me cry!  Maybe it was just because this movie came out in a rough time in my life but I pretty much thought it was the saddest thing I had ever seen.

The common factor in all these movies?  TOO MANY EMOTIONS!  Loving Peter, feeling the jealousy of Tink, desperately wanting a treehouse like the lost boys, and crying when they leave Never Neverland, never to return.  That's the thing about J.M Barrie.  He uses the words in this story very carefully.  Does Neverland represent all the the things we yearn for but will never have?  Or at least those parts of our imagination we wish were true, but never will be?  That is what is so magical about it though.   The untouchable pieces of wishes that escape us, except for in our dreams.   As Tink tells Peter at the end of Hook, "You know that place between sleep and awake?  That place where you still remember dreaming?  That's where I'll always love you...Peter Pan.  That's where I'l be waiting."  Maybe in a way Neverland is real.  Maybe it truly is that place between sleep and awake, that place where anything is possible.  The place where we will all always love Peter Pan, who was so many of our first boyfriends.

In a small way I always thought that Peter Pan was robbed of a happy ending.  Wendy and all the lost boys leave him alone in Neverland.  He is left to look on through the window at what he will never have and never be.  At first, this was why I was so distressed when Kate Winslet's character dies at the end of Finding Neverland.  Is Peter Pan really just a tragedy wearing the disguise of a innocent children's story?  When I started writing this post though, I remembered that after Kate dies, it shows her entering Neverland as though it is her heaven.  She is brought into the realm of eternal childlike happiness.  Where adventure and peace are one in the same.  Where Peter, the symbol of all that is impossibly possible will always be waiting for us to open our windows and let him in.  This might be the real happy ending to Peter Pan.