There is a parade passing my house as I type. It's the oldest or the biggest or the most superlative in some way Flag Day parade in the world. I don't really care. Parades are stupid. Right now I'm inside, trying to discover whether or not I have some secret mutant abilities that would destroy the parade and everyone watching.
To an unobserved onlooker, my face may appear that I am either jerking off or constipated (ok, maybe a slight yes to the former) but in every science fiction movie I've ever seen, whenever people discover they have mutant abilities, they always contort their faces into hilarious grimaces, which are later obscured due to the awesome pyrotechnics or special effects.
I hate parades. I know I use the phrase 'abhor' to where it doesn't hold the same 'oomph' as it could, but trust me. I've searched online thesauri, and there isn't a word to better extoll my pure, vitriolic hatred for parades.
Well, maybe not for all parades, but only the ones that pass my front lawn. Allow me to recap the joys of last year's parade, so I don't come off as some sort of Scrooge.
On the morning of the parade I was awakened by a 50 year old balding, shirtless man who wanted to use our bathroom. My parents said no, because it was 9 AM and he was already drunk. I saw this take place from my bedroom window, so my judgment might be off, but I don't think his love handles would have fit through our doors. He then went and started talking to a woman in a tank top who was standing on our flowerbed. This was a woman who should never, ever be allowed to wear a tank top, even in the comfort of her own home. She was holding two drinks, and after the guy talked to her for a little bit, they threw their drinks at our porch, missed and hit the garden, and then went into our neighbor's yard, where the guy relieved himself on some hedges. Our neighbor saw this, and proceeded to yell and scream and carry on. Good morning to you too.
Throughout the day, fat people in folding chairs set up their equipment on the lawn between the sidewalk and the street, as they've done for years. Fat people with chubby little kids who leave their sticky fingerprints all over the goddamn place and whine when they run out of cotton candy. Boomboxes play crappy patriotic, country, and religious rock. Now, if I had supernatural powers where I could magically end three styles of music, patriotic, country, and religious rock would cease to exist. Sorry Dolly.
A few people couldn't find a parking spot and so decided to use our driveway without asking. As they explained to my irate father, "Well, what are you, Communist? Why would you need to leave during the parade, eh?" He tried explaining that I had to leave for a rehearsal a few minutes before the parade ended, but they left to find good seats while he was talking to them.
So he called the police and had them ticketed. Unfortunately, there was too much parking on the street for the tow trucks to make it in, so they put a clamp-thing on the front tires until after the parade. After some wheeling and dealing, I was able to eek around their van and make it to rehearsal. According to my mom, after the parade the rest of my family ran inside and hid from them. There was a policeman guiding traffic on the corner, so they didn't try anything, and the tow truck came and took them away once traffic had died down.
The next morning, we awoke to find our sidewalks filled with comments like "Dirty Communists'," "Sadam and Osama lives here," "Athesist Scum," and the like. It was kind of funny: they were so angry, they went out, bought chalk and snuck in during the middle of the night and wrote badly misspelled insults on our sidewalks. Now, I'm not a vengeful person, but even I could think of some better retaliation than that, something that wasn't water-soluble.
Now this year, things have been okay. It's been raining and windy for the past few days, continuing up until this morning. People stayed away for the most part, at most setting down a tarp and leaving for long chunks of time. I liked it. It was quiet and ugly drunk-free. Around noon, however, the sun came out and started to shine like the motherfucker that it is. We have about a third of as many people camping out on our front lawn as we did last year, and they're no where near as annoying as guests from previous years. It's too cold for shirts to be off and tank tops worn without a jacket. The parade is about half-done now, and there has been no major commotion. Yet.
Well, that's enough for today. I've wasted too much time typing this, and I am not a superhero yet. I think I may continue with my attempts, which may or may not look similar to having a wad off at the wrist to the nifty archives to the untrained eye.
