Getting up at dawn on a Saturday morning to go hunt for parking is not one of my favorite things to do, but it has become a tradition that belongs to the beginning of December, and my son. It would somehow be sacrilegious to skip it, at least in his eyes. Small town parades are like that. The trouble is that my town isn’t so small anymore.
My son and I found parking on a side street downtown, and after triple checking that the curb was not yellow, and there was no threatening signage, I was about seventy-five percent sure we would have a vehicle to come back to. We entered the throng of people, which has been steadily increasing every year. So many northern transplants are snatching up their little piece of the sun.
People had their Christmas finery on—the leggings with the tiny gold reindeer all over them, the dollar store Santa hats, innumerable doodads involving antlers or bouncing Christmas shapes sticking up off of headbands. One guy had a t-shirt with a Santa face that read I do it for the ho’s.
We found a teeny gap in the crowd settling in around the street. It was a small little patch of curb we could call our own, temporarily. Immediately next to us was a man, a woman, and a four-year-old daughter that began throwing a tantrum, while the woman spoke in a placating voice. “We’ll get you a donut. We’ll get you another donut. We’ll get you your own donut…”
I scanned the environment and saw we were in a river of collapsible chairs. Almost everyone was sitting in one. We were among the minority that planned to sit our butts directly on the curb.
The parade began. Creative floats and large groups of coordinated dancers moved by. A group of retired firemen looked surprisingly handsome in kilts while blowing on some bagpipes. The woman next to me crooned to her daughter in high pitch at every sight. “Look at the doggy…oooohhh there’s that mean Grinch…look at the pretty dresses…”
The husband scuffed at the woman with the job of shoveling up horse poo behind the group of six horses. “That’s the worst job you can get,” he snickered. I suspected he had never smelled a fresh chicken poo. Next, the VW dealer and crew drove some brand spanking new average looking SUVs slowly down the street while blaring Christmas music. The husband stared with lust at the shiny new paint.
I’m going to stop here and point out that I am a natural-born skeptic; I’m a critic, a creature of doubt.
I periodically debate with myself the appropriateness of judgement. Is it wrong to judge people? We should be kind and accepting, I say to myself, right before shouting no! We should not accept poor choices and weak behavior. If you make excuses for, or explain away a problem, how can you ever fix it?
I dislike that ninety percent of the crowd is satisfied living in a cookie cutter restrictive homeowner’s association devoid of anything beyond human life (and sod.) Why aren’t we excited about owning our own property where we can do what we liked on it, rather than turning our homes into a status symbol to keep up with the Jones’? And I dislike that my average fellow American looks down on manual labor and seeks luxury living, which involves a great deal of disposable items and shiny new things. I also dislike that a lot of parents feel guilty if they don’t treat their children like royalty. All of these things feel like sneaky little symptoms of a big problem.
Fake snow, every southern child's favorite part.
The parade ended, and opened candy wrappers littered the ground. Everyone collapsed their collapsible chairs and started heading back to their vehicles.
I had that is it wrong to judge debate, and decided once again that until things change I’ll be sitting in public squinting my eyes at the people like the guy that chose to wear that I do it for the ho’s shirt, because society needs critics.
It’s my civic responsibility. Your welcome.