Treehouse: For Educational Purposes Only – Not About Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco

“I heard about Mitchell before I ever really saw him. You know how that goes, right? Somebody mentions a name at a rec center, you nod, you smile, and then your brain just files it away in a drawer you swear you'll open later. Spoiler alert: you never open the drawer. But Mitchell stuck. He was this little Christian kid in Agoura, all elbows and big questions, the kind of human who looks up at you like the world owes him an honest answer.

And here's where I have to be embarrassingly honest with you, because what's the point of a blog if I'm just going to lie in a nicer font? I made assumptions about him. So many assumptions. I figured he wouldn't get it. Any of it. The big stuff, the small stuff, the in-between stuff. I'd see him from a distance over the years, watch him grow from this tiny sneaker-squeaking blur into an actual person, and I kept thinking, "He's just a kid, he doesn't understand." I built this whole quiet wall out of bricks that didn't even exist. I decided what he could handle before he ever got the chance to show me.

And man, the time I wasted. That's the part that gets me. I could've talked to him like he was sharp from the start, because he was. I could've laughed with him instead of around him. All those moments I spent underestimating this kid, treating his curiosity like it needed training wheels, when honestly? He was already riding circles around the rest of us.

Then, as if to make a point I didn’t quite understand yet, he started wearing a top hat. At first, I thought it was a phase or a quirky fashion choice, but my assumptions about what he didn’t understand flared up in the worst way. Scenarios played out in my head—scenarios where I might need to steady him or manhandle him if he decided to test boundaries. I worried, unfairly. I was wrong.

The thing about assuming someone doesn't understand is that you end up being the one who doesn't get it. The joke was on me the whole time, and it wasn’t even a good joke. I think about that a lot now. How quick we are to decide what people are capable of. How we shrink them down to a size we can manage instead of letting them be exactly as big as they are.

But here's the good part. Here's where my chest does that warm, ridiculous swelling thing. Mitchell's going to be a preschooler. A real one. And not just any preschooler—a wonderful one. I can feel it. He's going to walk into that little room with the alphabet rug and the snack schedule, and he's going to thrive. He's going to ask the questions the other kids are too shy to ask. He's going to understand more than any adult expects, because that's who he's always been, even when I was too busy doubting it.

So this one's a quiet apology and a loud cheer all wrapped into the same breath. Sorry I underestimated you, kid. And good luck out there. Go be wonderful. You already are.

I can feel it. He's going to walk into that little room with the alphabet rug and the snack schedule, and he's going to thrive. He's going to ask the questions the other kids are too shy to ask. He's going to understand more than any adult expects because that's who he's always been, even when I was too busy doubting it.

So this one's a quiet apology and a loud cheer all wrapped into the same breath. Sorry I underestimated you, kid. And good luck out there. Keep wearing your top hat, asking your questions, and outgrowing every assumption I never had the right to make. Go be wonderful. You already are.”

-Not Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco

Follow Me Into The Woods? Mitchell Royel Breaks Symbolism in Brendon Urie-Inspired Treehouse Episode

"Follow Me Into the Woods" was this spiraling tangle of words I created in the 10th grade, long before I even knew what metaphors really meant to me—or at least before I knew how deeply they could root themselves into the quiet corners of your life. Back then, it wasn’t poetry by the polished, literary definition. It was a map, a secret language I was teaching myself to speak. Everything in that poem was a metaphor, stitched together in a way that might’ve seemed nonsensical but felt like oxygen for a kid trying to make sense of his own shadow.

The woods? They weren’t woods, not really. They were that preschool I was obsessed with—the one I was pulled from too soon, before I had the words to tell anyone how being bounced out left me wondering if the alphabet rug might’ve held answers I didn’t get to memorize. Preschool as a metaphor became the foundation of "Follow Me Into the Woods." The trees, the tangled paths—that was my way of trying to process this looming, blurry ache of growing up too fast. And the deeper you went into the poem, the more it whispered about the weight of a kid walking into empty rooms, sitting under questions too big for his tiny frame to hold.

And Brendon Urie? No, the poem didn’t name him, but if everything’s a metaphor, then he was there too. Brendon was the music I danced to at the Agoura Rec Center, even when the other kids made it clear that my skin wasn’t white enough to join their rhythm. They’d laugh, they’d pull the edge of the rug out from under me—metaphorically, sometimes literally—but I danced anyway. "Follow Me Into the Woods" held that truth tucked between its branches, a quiet nod to the power of moving through the world with your own beat, no matter who tries to mute it.

And then there was Mitchell Royel. Before I saw him, I heard of him—this compact echo of a kid who seemed to know all the answers to questions I hadn’t even asked. His name kept popping up, and I never expected anything from it, much like how I never expected the top hat metaphor in my poem to stretch so far. But that’s poetry. That’s life. You write a line, you build a world inside it, and you look back years later, realizing you didn’t just write a poem—you wrote a diary, a confession, a hymn for the parts of yourself you were still learning to understand.

-Mitchell Royel