FROM: Amber Earns Her Ears Published Mondays

Amber Bids Disney World Farewell

Few events are so fraught with regret as departure from Disney World. But the magic can't last forever, and now it's Amber's turn to pack up, her stint in the CareerStart Program over. Sad, yes - but is the magic really over? Will Amber ever return?

- Amber Sewell, May 16, 2011

"Mikael. If you hug Amber one more time, I swear I'm going to shove you into the cardboard compressor and push the button."

The end of my CareerStart Program came too soon - and yet in some ways, I had been ready to leave for at least a month.

After six months in Florida, it was finally the beginning of August, and I was preparing to make the immediate transition from living independently in Florida and working at Walt Disney World to transferring my green plastic bins to my dorm room at the University of Tennessee. The Travel Channel (my favorite) had been blocked by Disney's cable provider, and I was itching to start moving forward again; a sensation that I had lost after my fifth month on the program.

Just because I was ready to regain some momentum in my life, however, did not make the idea of leaving Florida any easier.

When I got here, I had been terrified that I wouldn't be able to get along with anyone, anywhere at Disney World, and now I couldn't imagine leaving the coworkers, roommates, and other Cast Members who had wormed their way into a place where not even the people with whom I had attended high school for four years had managed to reach.

Things Left Undone

For the first time I was faced with the concept of leaving people behind that I might never see again. I was upset about it. Australia, Canada, California, Texas... my new friends were all about to depart to their respective homes around the world.

Rather than spend my last month or so getting things packed up and ready to go, I spent every moment working or out with friends from work - late night runs to IHOP and Steak 'n' Shake were common. Time was flying by, and as much fun as I was having, I watched plans that I had made with friends pass unfulfilled.

My roommate Paige and I, for example, had planned to return to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (we had spent about fourteen hours there on opening day, arriving a tad before five in the morning and leaving much too late), but never quite found the time to pick up our house banners to hang over our beds or have another butterbeer.

We never made it to see La Nouba, and despite our best efforts, we never caught the hot air balloon ride at Downtown Disney, Characters in Flight, when conditions were right, and I had not gotten in a pool. I began to regret the days off I spent lounging around inside the apartment, or nights when I was too tired to eke out the effort to leave.

But I was doing my best to make up for all that.

Last Call at the Electric Umbrella

At work, during the last week or so, I was kind of a mess. Before moving to Florida, I was the person who never cried in public, whose possession of emotions themselves was left to question. But my experience in the CareerStart Program had changed me. I had grown attached to these people, much more than I would have ever believed possible. As goodbyes were being said during the final few days of work, I was constantly close to tears. The two married couples who I worked with caught me as I was going up from the bathroom, and as they pulled their things out of their lockers, hugged me before they left.

"We just wanted to say that you are a good girl. We are very proud of you. One day, you will run this company; you will be CEO."

My eyes welled up a bit at this praise, and as Eva patted my cheek, they disappeared through the door, and I made my way back into the restaurant.

When one of my favorite leaders gave my coworker Betty and me our evaluations on one of our last nights, I read his praise with stinging eyes. His entire goal throughout my program had been to make me cry (it's a part of our sarcastic, playfully hateful friendship), and I only managed to make it through the office doors before Betty and I were both in tears.

The people who were leaving with me were equally emotional. Pictures were sneaked during lulls, heads were clustered in the lineup, and I developed a bad habit of wandering away from the back of the Neico grill to chat with Betty and Emily as they reminisced about our past six months together.

One of our leaders called me back from the register to say goodbye, and while I managed not to cry while hugging him, Mikael swooped in with a hug - he had discovered that this simple act would totally reduce me to a blubbering state in no time.

"I hope you don't mind that, while I'm hugging you because you're sad, I'm also enjoying making you cry," he whispered gleefully.

I sniffled, laughing, into his shoulder, and was promptly sent back out to the register. While we weren't exactly busy at that point, I did have to explain to a guest or two why I looked like a wreck.

On our last day at work, Emily and I managed not to shed a tear. We were closing together (I was scrubbing Neico - my favorite! - and she had dish room), and though we were separated from Betty up in the hoods, we were glad that at least the three of us would share our last night at the Electric Umbrella.

As it turned out, the dish room was not the best place for Emily and me. It is perhaps the highest traffic area during closing, and people were constantly wandering in and out as we said our goodbyes. We joked around, me with my typical backwards hat scraping blackened hamburger grease off the great metal pieces of the grill, and Emily spraying ketchup and tomatoes off of trays. We oscillated between shock that this was our last night and doing our best to ignore that depressing fact.

And then Micro came in.

Micro Changes the Mood

Micro was a cheerful, middle-aged man who had come to work at the Electric Umbrella a few months after I got there, and I referred to him as my adopted uncle. He was never without a smile, and he had a habit of referring to me as the Energizer Bunny, a reference to how excited I got as I worked the anchor position. I hadn't seen much of him that day, but as he walked out of the dish room after our short conversation, he had mumbled, "It's just not gonna be any fun around here without you girls."

And that was it. I was done. My face crumpled, and Emily and I just looked at each other, sharing that overwhelming feeling of sadness that this was our last night as part of the Electric Umbrella family.

That set the tone for our last few hours. Any time Micro came in - which was frequently - we would make eye contact, and I would start crying all over again. Several times I would just set down my sprayer and crouch above the chunks of hamburger on the wet floor, strangled laughter coming out distorted amidst the tears. One of our coordinators came in, and Emily was reduced to the same state. It seemed as if our lack of ridiculous sadness before was all catching up with us at once.

"Why are you crying?", Betty aasked us as she walked in at some point during the night. "Why? Que pasa?" Emily and I just exchanged glances and hiccups of laughter.

We stayed at work much longer than needed. When the entire kitchen was clean and emptied of people, we stood around and took pictures - posed in our favorite positions, like anchor or back of Neico, and other completely random ones, like our closing sign covered with the name of everyone we'd worked with over the last six months. We finally ventured downstairs to say goodbye to our final closing leader and coordinator, who gave Emily and I bouncy balls in exchange for our promise to stop crying.

Final Night in Florida

My last night in Florida was spent in a friend's Vacation Club villa. A whole group of us got together, and I brought my program poster that we got at graduation for everyone to sign.

Betty made dinner, and we all sat around and chatted about our time together. I handed out letters that I had written to everyone, sitting in the floor of my apartment, telling them what kind of an impact they had made on me and how much I would miss them - which I refused to let them read in front of me.

At around three in the morning, though, the friend who was staying in the villa needed to get some sleep, and we slowly moved out into the parking lot, where we all once again started crying. This was it; it was our official last time seeing our family all together.

After much hugging and many false starts toward our cars, I finally got into mine with a few others and headed home. I only had time to change into my pajamas when there was a knock on my door, and in came Mikael, likewise clad, carrying his stuffed animal. I quickly ran into my bedroom, grabbed my Hogwarts snuggie and stuffed Donald Duck that I'd bought just that morning when Emily and I went to spend our last day at the park, and within the hour we had both passed out on the couch in the living room.

All too soon, my alarm went off, and Mikael helped me move all of my crap (which really wasn't in any kind of order, or completely packed) into Dinosaur, my car, and after one last hug, went back to his apartment across the parking lot to sleep.

I did a final sweep of my apartment and said goodbye to Paige, who had spent the week with her family, meaning we hadn't really seen much of each other. I was in an exhausted haze, not fully comprehending that this was it, the last time I'd be in this apartment.

I got into Dinosaur, stuffy already from the Florida heat and the massive amounts of crap that Mikael and I had packed in earlier, and put the key in the ignition. I was already late for breakfast with my parents at Boma. But as soon as I started the car, the finality of it all washed over me, and I only made it to the opposite side of the parking lot where, with shaking fingers, I texted Mikael to get his butt to the front door immediately.

I clambered out of my car and hopped across a little shrub, waiting in front of the door when Mikael opened it. He took one look at my face and hugged me.

"Aw, it just hit you, didn't it, dear?"

I chuckled a little through my sobs. It was so difficult to believe that it was over. After a few minutes, one of his roommates came down to see what the commotion was, and Mikael reminded me that I needed to leave to meet my parents. As much as I hated to, I knew that it was time to go. With a last sniffle and hug, I got into my car and drove to Boma.

The Long Ride Home

I stayed awake for the entire ten, eleven hour drive home. I didn't want to stop to let my father take over for me, because while driving I at least didn't have to think about anything. I played the radio loudly, rolled the windows down, and occasionally glanced over at the passenger's seat, where Donald was sitting. But as purple clouds laced with lightning colored the sky ahead of us, Dad commandeered my car, and I spent a few hours curled up in the front seat of my mother's car.

An hour or so away from my parents' house, I took Dinosaur back. A scant two hours or so of sleep, and then I was back up again, transferring my stuff from my car to Dad's truck. By noon, I was moved into my college dorm, surrounded by pictures of my time in Florida, and already experiencing what one Facebook group calls 'Post-Disney Depression.'

Is this the end of Amber? No! She has more ears to earn, and next week her column returns - with Amber in the College Program!

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