So, my oldest daughter plays saxophone and has joined the high school band this year.
Have mercy! I was never a band kid, but this band thing is INTENSE! School hasn’t even started, and she’s been in band camp for three weeks already! They got her started so that she could march in the 4th of July parade.
We have six high schools in our district, and all the bands marched. Not all the bands march their freshmen, but hers does.
I have made all efforts to avoid the 4th of July parade for many years—it's freaking HOT in TX on the 4th of July. But since she’s participating, I am compelled to sit through hours of people walking and cars and trucks, etc., crawling by with bored-looking drivers—all the while trying to unstick myself from my camp chair and wipe away the perspiration before it drips into my eyes.
For a long while, I had a hard time trying to figure out why parades seemed so fun when I was a kid. The truth was my two kids were not happy with the situation and would have much rather been watching TV. Here are some ideas of why the parade was not as entertaining as I remembered.
The most important factor was nobody was throwing anything at us. When I was a kid, we always sat on the curb, as close to the action as possible, because for sure every float was going to throw candy at us—maybe even little trinkets like plastic bead necklaces or toy soldiers or even pencils or pens. What’s not to love about people throwing candy at kids? I now know it is probably a safety hazard, not to mention candy would melt as soon as it hit the pavement, and it would probably cause a big mess later; the whole place would be invaded by fire ants and we’d all suffer with highly unpleasant blisters- but still CANDY.
There were no grown men dressed as Elvis riding tiny motorcycles in tight circles and figure-eight patterns. Bummer.
There were no grown men wearing fez hats driving tiny cars in carefully choreographed patterns, honking their tiny horns and waving at us and throwing candy.
Fortunately, there were also no (or very few) clowns.
Do you have parade memories? The PA town I grew up in had a big Halloween parade. I remember one time the trees were beautiful with bright orange and yellow and red; we went to the Halloween parade, and it started snowing!
When I was in high school, I lived in Fort Myers, FL. Its claim to fame was that it was where Thomas Edison would go for the winter. So, capitalizing on that, they had a Christmas parade of lights. It was a big deal. Every float had to have electric lights. People would go out and strap their lawn chairs to signposts weeks in advance to save their spots.
