"How long since you've been to Disneyland?" my wife Yahaira asked.

"Hell, 15 years?"

"Let's go tomorrow," she said. "Please, please, please, please..."

How I wish I had sobered up before I shook on it.

Bob the gardener gave us directions: "It's easy. All ya do's take the 101 to the 5 and look for the signs."

Three hours later, as we came to a broil on the freeway, I wondered what Bob the gardener had against us. Stopping and going, shifting and cursing, my car and I both promised to overheat. I came to hate the guy in front of me with all his brake lights and lack-of-goingness, his bumper sticker that read "So It Goes."

Yahaira tried to make conversation, but I could only articulate one word: "Aaaahhhhh!"

Zen masters instruct us to let go, to surrender to the power of the present moment. I had taken two Buddha breaths when the man behind me honked for me to fill the gap ahead.

I snapped. "Where do you want me go, pal? WHERE DO YOU WANT ME TO GO?"

Yahaira held my hand so that the middle finger didn't come out. That letting go business was not intended for Highway 5.

We were imprisoned by steaming metal: tall cars, small cars, blue cars, red... Saturns, Hondas, go-carts, sleds. Where could all of these people possibly be headed?

Answer: Disneyland. Every one of them.

Disneyland doesn't have an off ramp; the 5 just lets off at its gates. Nowhere in the world is there a place so peopled as this. There are lines to get in, lines to get out, lines to eat, lines to excrete. There are fake lines to get into the real lines.

Yahaira and I were paralyzed. Not from the possibilities but from the fact that we both suffer from claustrophobia. When the crowd gets dense, we bang our heads and yell like Rain Man.

Inside the park, we found sanctuary at a corral by Thunder Mountain. Normally, I can't bear hillbilly music, but today it somehow soothed me. I consulted our Disneyland Atlas to find everything where I had left it 15 years earlier: the tiki thingy, spinning teacups, It's a Full World. Try as I might, I couldn't work up the zeal to propose a destination. Yahaira didn't care; she was rocking back and forth talking to herself.

"V - e - r - n..."

Ultimately, we decided to brave the crowds for a shot at Space Mountain. It was, after all, the only real coaster in the park. We crossed our hearts and jumped into the torrent of humanity to trudge our way across the park. Families came at us in waves, forcing us to duck and weave. They were armed with strollers and balloons and junk food. Sometimes Yahaira and I had to release hands to let a linebacker through.

Near dusk, we arrived at Space Mountain to find a mob, nay, a mobby throng, of people awaiting the ride. Heat lifted from their bodies in layers of reek. It was like Woodstock in a bottle. My head spun. I told Yahaira that I couldn't do it. I definitely, definitely couldn't do it.

The sign read, "Estimated wait: 2 hours."

I had to do the math: If the wait for a ride were 2 hours and the ride itself lasted 2 minutes, then during a 6-hour visit, I could go on three rides. And for these 6 minutes I paid $100, or $17 per minute of diversion. I felt like the guy who gets drunk and spends $75 on phone sex that he can't remember the next morning.

Just when the tea party could get no madder, I spotted a boy in the middle of Cosmic Court. He was bouncing to the music on the intercom. His chubby little legs bent and kicked and landed him on his rump now and again. He wielded his lollipop like a marching band baton. Sometimes he'd laugh just because. Earlier today he had seen Mickey Mouse -- the Mickey, not the one you find at Toys R Us. Now he was dancing and having dessert. No, this was Disneyland. He was having lunch.

Mom pulled him to the side to save him from an Hispanic stampede. He never looked up. He was promised a parade tonight, when all the Disney characters would wave at him like so many Santa Clauses.

Wedged in traffic on our way home, I reflected on the boy who made me feel so dumb. Disneyland wasn't a bad place. You just have to see it through a child's eyes. I had missed the opportunity to let go, stop my bickering, and become uncomplicated. I could have just bought a lollipop and enjoyed the chaos.

Then the guy behind me honked, and I lost it: "WHERE DO YOU WANT ME TO GO?"

When we finally got home and I dropped my weary skull onto the pillow, it was the happiest place on Earth.

I'm having trouble writing. It's the same problem I have every day: I can't stop twitching long enough to get the words down.

I have Tourette Syndrome.

It's not the amusing type of Tourette where I get to curse out loud; it's a simple, unyielding, life-numbing compulsion to make foolish movements.

If you are unlucky enough to have TS, you know it to be a lonely condition. The impulse to twitch is stronger than 300 mosquito bites in need of scratching. You can hold it off for a while -- a hot date, perhaps -- but it is always there when you return, only angrier.

"What is a twitch?"

I'm glad you asked.

Twitching is a hydra-headed beast. Just when you have one spasm licked, it assumes a clever new form.

Presently, I suffer from 14 different tics. They are on some sort of platoon schedule. At this moment, I'm battling the nose tic. This one is especially hateful because it is so subtle. Outwardly, you see a man twitching his nose like a gerbil. Inwardly, he is screwing the nasal pipes so badly that he can taste blood.

Soon there will be a pain inside my face that no aspirin can touch. Sleep is the only cure. Sometimes I use a pince-nez (nose pincher thingy) to confuse the tic. It works for an hour at a time.

Today I am applying an ice pack to freeze the tic out. This typically leaves me with a runny nose and so many bugarcicles. Sometimes the skin beneath my nose chafes from the frost. My mom thinks I'm snorting household cleaners again.

Later, this spasm will be replaced by the graveyard shift, which involves my shoulder and arms. The shoulder tic is a little more involved and a lot more embarrassing. In fact, I do shows every night at 8 p.m. My elbow rises, my shoulder comes forward, and I tilt my head in the direction of the mess. Clever knave, that tic, to hide inside my shoulder, where it can't be massaged. Multiply by 500 times per day, and you wonder why I'm grumpy.

Then we have the guttural noise with which I have lived since high school. I've learned to make the sound without moving my lips so that others don't know where it's coming from. I have become a TS ventriloquist. So it goes.

Other forms of twitching include closing my eyes for entirely too long when I blink, smiling for no reason at all, clearing my throat nonstop, sniffing, curling my toes, tightening my butt, and trying to think hair onto my head. Wait -- that last one is part of my OCD. That's another story.

"What have I done to combat TS?"

You ask all the right questions.

I have tried everything: medication, acupuncture, biofeedback, Tony Robbins, you name it. The best remedy is still vodka and tonic. Recently, I decided to name my tic "J. J." Instead of berating myself as I have for 25 years, now I just roll my eyes and say, "What now, J. J.?" It's like having a retarded invisible friend.

This is not a cry for compassion. I'm immune to the stuff. This is a selfish exercise to alleviate the burden of my secret. Even now, I am investing half of myself in the sharing and half in calming my gerbil nose. Some days, I throw my hands in the air and say the hell with it-I make more sense as a vegetable.

So when I tease the mentally impaired, it is with a sense of kinship. To those of you who live with this ailment, cheers to you, mates. Having TS is like being confined to a wheelchair that no one can see. We suffer alongside any other cripple, only we don't get the good parking spots.