She sleeps on the couch that night reasoning (correctly) that she will wake up early enough to get to The Parade on time. When she awakes, she checks her weblog for encouragement to see  through the task at hand. For she is going on a journey, an adventure, slaying dragons and rescuing miners  all for the benefit of mankind. She is resolved to meet her fate whatever that might be.

Fate is generic frozen pizza, the box foreswearing  that the slivers of mystery meat are pepperoni, FDA approved. She marvels at those who only indulge in mozzarella and tomato sauce only at genteel, temperate hours.

This doesn’t quite look like Kiwi Dutch’s Italian food  photography, but Rome wasn’t built in a day  and didn’t have kitty cat plates.

 

After she breakfasted in 2 minutes or so time, she finds herself packing for a lengthy trip.

Book bag with wheels –check.

Purse with netbook inside to hopefully keep the netbook safe inside her book bag. safe –check.

The last personal cassette player in the world actually used in public –check. (She did, after all find her copy of the Boys n’ da Hood soundtrack, a bit ago, from when she was a young, graceful lass of 14 and into gangsta rap).

A couple of books to read –check.

Small cooler bag with 5 different drinks –check

Phone in one pocket, camera in the  other –check (she wishes she knew how to upload pictures from her 2 mega-pixel crap camera phone. There are 3 classics the world should see before the world ends. 1. Rainbow over a Pizza Hut 2. Philippe the cat laying on the stove next to a giant pot –Fatal Attraction or the secret ingrediant in General Tso’s Chicken? 3. The author of this blog sort of looking like that mugshot of Nick Nolte picture).

Her blogging friends say she’ll be fine. She trusts her friends and climbs into the car with half of what she owns in her book bag. She wears over her shorts and T-shirt a denim jacket  because the perfect chamber of commerce weather predicted for the day magically dissapeared and in its place is sent a dreary, slightly cool day (lyin’ bastards!).

She is set out upon the curb literally at the stroke of 9 –seriously the  clock from the old courthouse was a ‘stroking away. With the injunction for her mother to be careful and call her when she gets home so she knows she hasn’t met an unfortunate fate, Fun with the Mentally Ill begins. Yet there is no time to be worried. She knows where she wants to go and that she needs to to go in a hurry to snatch a place in time for the 3 hour long (an hour longer than it really need be) extravaganza.

She is where she watched the parade the year before last. Under a tree, sitting on mulch, wood chips sticking her uncovered legs. She forgot this year before last or perhaps they used pine straw. Eh, at least it’s a place to sit down and watch.

Fifteen minutes later, her phone rings. It’s the coroner. No, wait, it’s her mother. Mom hasn’t expired after all, neither has her daughter. Weird! Why am I narrating this if nothing interesting happens?

And so she watches the parade, with all the wonder and awe of someone who has seen this shit a billion times and still goes, we flash back to the parade’s of the past. 1984 –her first parade. Definitely was the 80s. She recalls the man with his boombox to his ear. 1991 –Almost run over by a car playing Latifah’s Had It Up to Here. 1995? –Cutest baby ever steals her souvenir plastic thingy, the theif sitting in her lap. All females are called “Mama”. and at times the 1 year-old puts used silly string in her own hair. She wonders whatever happened to that baby. Lote 90s-early 00s –she finds a Bible tract and reads it. It’s a reprint from the 70s, portending hell and illustrated everyone leaving their clothes behind (one didn’t see anything though).

The parade begins! Cops in cars, on bikes, motercycles, and horses go by.

 

Coming to a theater near you: Criminals don’t have a chance against him, he’s one angry cop. Out to seek justice for the hole poked into his wife, Blow Up Dolly, he’s full of a raging inferno of air. He won’t stop until he blows out, he’s Inflate-a-Cop.