Sunday, February 12, 2012

I Could Live Without A Parade




As a lil’ lady growing up in  Manhattan (Kansas, the Little Apple), I sometimes spent time with family friends who lived on some farmland in Clay Center, a rural town about 45 minutes away from our college town. I don’t remember much about the family – I  cant even recall their names – but my memories of them mostly involve watching a  lot of taped episodes of Full House with the mom and daughter, a show I wasn’t allowed to watch at home.

Anyway, maybe it was Memorial Day, or possibly the anniversary of Clay Center’s founding, but the daughter was going to be in a parade. And I was going to be in the parade too! But just as all the kids were being rounded up to sit on the rudimentary float – which,  as I recall was some sort of large slab on wheels, covered in white fluffy fabric , on which children would sit and gently wave red roses in the direction of the crowed – I decided that the whole being-in-a-parade thing really wasn’t for me.  

I’m guessing my refusal involved casting my eyes downward, abandoning all but the most basic verbal communication, and possibly squeezing out a few tears (this, I’m sorry to say, is not entirely dissimilar to my current go-to approach to getting out of things).  I was offered the chance to ride in the bed of the pickup that was going to pull the float along (which seems pretty dangerous, though I suppose it would have been traveling at a relatively safe parade pace), as well as the option of riding inside the cab of the truck.  But I wouldn’t have it.

Why? I’m not sure. I was a pretty shy kid, and not very much fun, so that probably had something to do with it.  Maybe I was scared of sliding off the side of that float.  Maybe I was scared that the parade would take me away forever, and that I’d never see my family again.  But if I had known  that would be my only chance to be in a parade -- I mean, let’s face it.  I’m a stranger to the pageant circuit, I’m not in the armed forces, and I don’t know how to wrangle a giant balloon --  I probably wouldn’t have been such a baby about the whole thing.

Then again, I – unlike the kids on the float – ended up having a lot of candy thrown my way.  Maybe I did make the right decision. 

P.S. Hi Kj!