MEE-Kay

That the French should hate Euro-Disney is, of course, in perfect keeping with the French. It boils down to how the French view children and childhood. Visit any Paris playground and an uncanny feeling hits you as soon as you enter. Parisian playgrounds are deathly quiet. No screaming, no yelling, no singing. No Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, playground bullies giving purple bellies to sickly kids. The raucous boys play polite, silent games of soccer. The kids with coke-bottle glasses read Marcel Proust. When parents are ready to leave, they say, au revoir, and that's it. Kids come willingly. No tantrums, no backtalk. It's totally un-American.

So, when it comes to Euro-Disney, no way is a proud Frenchman going to get sodomized by a goofy, capitalistic, American mouse whose chief job on earth is to indulge kids.

The Berkeley travel guide suggests spending three days at the Louvre. With a four-year-old kid, try 20 minutes. Amazing how even a four year old can embrace the concept of extortion. The only way our kid would see the world's most famous art museum was if we'd buy him a bag of M&M's.

Sudden terror. While meandering through the Denon wing, looking at Etruscan pottery, Mikey dropped his M&M's. As the colored pellets skidded like marbles on the 400-year-old stone floor, a phalanx of security guards charged. I expected them to pull out .9-mm Beretta pistols, line us up between the Roman urns and Greek vases, blind-fold and shoot us.

Who were we trying to fool? Kids are not impressed with 17th Century architecture. Even dressed as Butt-Head, Mona Lisa's a loser. Paris and kids go together like Bordeaux and Cheese Whiz. What self-respecting kid would choose a fresh baguette over squishy Wonderbread? A meal of canard a la presse jardiniere and salade nicoise just doesn't have the same sine qua non as a McDonald's Happy Meal.

Enough of the adult stuff. L'affaire M&M said that we desperately needed to find kid stuff. And what better place than Euro Disney, the Mega Mouse attraction 20 miles east of Paris? Mikey's reaction was a two-word alliteration: "Wow! When?"

As soon as we took our places along the Euro-Disney's Electrical Parade, we realized we had found the only place in France where French kids act their age. The deprived pups were out of control. "MEE-Kay!" they screamed in prepubescent orgiastic unison as the Mouseman and his fuzzy entourage high-stepped down Main Street. The French kids were like U.S. sailors at a Tailhook convention, like Muscovites magically transported to the Calvin Klein boutique at Bloomingdales, like Bob Dole at a Republican fund raiser. For repressed tadpoles whose parents sprinkle de Beauvoir and Foucault with their pishers' morning feedings, low-brow, high-tech Euro-Disney is, indeed, The Happiest Place on Earth.