Topic: A Parade

Author: Chris Dunn

The exhaust pipe of the car grew hazy as my vision funneled down the drain and the scorching asphalt rose to meet my face. Mercifully, my collapse was arrested by the streamered handlebars of my banana-seat Schwinn. People talk at me, their voices sounding miles away. I just want to lie down and take a good long nap, but we’re in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a parade. Plus, I was promised pizza at the end. Sure, I was in the advanced stages of heat stroke, but it’s insane what a 10-year-old will put up with for a free slice of pizza.

It had sounded like fun, riding my bike in the parade with my cub scout pack. I don’t remember what patriotic holiday or civic event we were honoring with our circuitous march through the tiny town of North College Hill. Does it matter? I remember we were to gather in the Ontario parking lot with our bikes decorated red, white and blue wearing our full-dress uniforms. Then we would ride along the parade route waving to the throngs clogging the curbside. At the end there would be pizza and Coke! That had sealed the deal. Sure, it might be a long ride, but for the promise of pizza and soda, I could endure anything. Or so I thought…

I showed up on time – even at age 9 or so I knew to be punctual – with a few loose tassels dangling from both my handlebars and the inverted U-shape which supported the back of the long seat. It was a token effort, but good enough that no one said anything as the others in my pack began to assemble. One of the den mothers -- now just a blurry, maternal placeholder in my memory – gathered us all together and found our assigned spot in line of floats, cars and bands. She went over the parade route, but we paid little attention. The car ahead would pull out, we’d follow it, when we reached the terminus at the local high school there would be pizza. “Pizza.” Got it!

As we stood in the parking lot waiting for the parade to begin, a hint of trepidation began to gnaw at my happy mood. You see the thing about parades those who’ve never been in one fail to realize is, they’re slow -- slow to start, slow en route, and slow and long to finish. The sun which beat down on the – let’s say – fourth of July day was brutal. The temperature was in the middle 90s. And the thing about the cub scout dress uniform is that it’s long sleeves, long pants and navy blue. If that’s not enough, let’s tie the top off with a neckerchief. By the time we pulled into the street, I was already drenched in sweat, and that’s when the true horror hit.

You see, the prospect of zipping along the parade route for an hour or two on my trusty two-wheeler only worked if we were free to roam, but we had an assigned slot we were told to maintain. We weren’t riding our bikes in the parade, we were walking them, slowly, at a pace that would bore a snail while the accordion effect of any long line of people jerked and faltered to a stop continually and the car in front of us hosed us down in a pre-Nader level of exhaust fumes. We weren’t so much riding our bikes, as carrying them the length of the parade. It was agony, sheer agony! Every time we heard the marching band strike up their parade piece and we came to a full halt for the song’s duration, I howled in internal anguish. Would this day never end! Where was the pizza?

My saliva dried up, my mouth instead exuding a thick pasty foam, the cheers from the crowd turned from supportive to hateful mockery, and I ceased being able to see anything but the bumper of the car before us. Each time I fell, I picked myself up and pressed onward, there seeming to be no other way out. It was a parade after all. You can’t just leave a parade. When I sagged against the handlebars outside city hall as the mayor droned into the third paragraph of his nonsensical jabbering, I felt a concerned hand on my shoulder. The next thing, I was in a car being driven home while I sucked on some ice chips. “You know, you’re supposed to stay hydrated…” Her generic, maternal voice chided me. No. I didn’t know. The vast space between my imagined universe and reality was now abundantly clear. Someone probably should’ve been looking out for me and my fellow scouts. I didn’t even get to have any pizza.