The 6th Floor Blog: Wait, Mermaids Live How Long?

"We all hate that it's her 15th birthday. . . . It's like, who gets married at 15? Why can't she be at least 18 or 20? None of us are 15 anymore."

That's how the Weeki Wachee performers feel about the fact that 15 is when the Little Mermaid — the eponym of their several-times-daily show — gets to swim to the surface of the sea for the first time. After checking the original source material, Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, I have to say I agree: What's the big hurry? Mermaids live to be 300!

There was so much that she wished to know, and her sisters were unable to answer all her questions. Then she applied to her old grandmother, who knew all about the upper world, which she very rightly called the lands above the sea.

"If human beings are not drowned," asked the little mermaid, "can they live forever? Do they never die as we do here in the sea?"

"Yes," replied the old lady, "they must also die, and their term of life is even shorter than ours. We sometimes live to three hundred years, but when we cease to exist here we only become the foam on the surface of the water, and we have not even a grave down here of those we love. We have not immortal souls, we shall never live again; but, like the green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water, and behold all the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see."

I don't remember the Disney movie "The Little Mermaid" going there. But Ariel is a teenager all the same, according to the IMDb summary. As a corrective, here's a not-so-little mermaid, part of one illustrator's "Disney University" project, in which Disney characters are imagined as college students. (And yes, Beast is B.M.O.C.)