I went into our game and movie library at work just before lunch and The Return of Jafar was playing on the TV. It reminded me of a moment of completely unexpected elation that I experienced many summers ago.
It was 2000 and I was at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Sciences (which, sadly, had its funding cut this year due to the economy) and was starting to come out of my shell.
As is often the case with summer programs, our TAs/RAs arranged for various activities each night to keep us occupied. One such event was The Newly Roommated Game, which was a knockoff of the Newlywed Game that used to be on TV. My roommate was Richard (I’m pretty sure – I actually had to look his name up on Facebook to get it right) and we decided that it’d be fun to be a part of this.
Most of the questions were relatively similar to the actual Newlywed Game, such as, “What’s your roommate’s favorite ice cream flavor?” Some were observational, like, “Does your roommate wear glasses or contacts?”
One question was: “If your roommate was a Disney villain, what villain would he or she be?” I was asked this about Richard and I didn’t know what he would say. I wrote down Jafar because it was the first villain that came to mind when I envisioned Richard with an evil grin on his face. Sure, Jafar.
In retrospect, there aren’t all that many male Disney villains. Gaston? Those gypsies from Pinnochio? Scar? I mean, come on. Scar’s a lion.
So, really, Jafar was probably, percentage-wise, the best pick. It was likely to be the first male villain to pop into Richard’s head. But I wasn’t thinking like that back then. I was thinking about how Richard had an air of Agrabah about him, how he’d look pretty dashing with a cape about him, and how he probably hated street urchins.
So when our turn came and Richard, after a half second, blurted out, “Jafar?” as an answer, I proudly turned my written answer around with such excitement that I almost got lightheaded for a moment.
Needless to say, we crushed the competition and handily won The Newly Roommated Game, although I don’t remember if there was any actual award for winning. For me, that singular moment of perfection was reward enough.