Editor’s Notes: A hack rains on parades

I’m not a fan of parades.

It’s an admitted shortcoming on my part, and I suspect it’s because I’m not allowed to be in them.

Still, being allergic to parades as we know them is an obvious handicap for a weekly newspaper hack.

Especially these days, because it seems like every time you turn around, someone is putting on a parade and/or winter festival. There’s just no way around them.

This applies especially during certain holidays.

And then it’s not just us poor downtrodden weekly editorial hacks stuck in increasingly worse traffic for much of the week, now we have to spend our weekends getting stuck in stupid traffic to watch other people purposely get stuck in the traffic to make the point that many of them get out and go where they are going.

I think it’s a bit much. Of course, parades have been around forever. There was even one in the classic movie Animal House. I’d google to find out how they got started (probably had something to do with war and bringing home prisoners to cut their heads off) but our internet is down and I’m on a deadline and it’s all water anyway under the bridge.

First, parades don’t go anywhere (although it can be fun to watch a rogue parade go off course and try to escape).

If anything, they are only increasing. For another, what we are facing now is a proliferation of events related to parades. Festivals and such.

And that’s when it hit me. We men are being deliberately committed to death and we are too stupid to realize it.

First, many if not most of these events are planned and executed by women, some of whom are natural busybodies and don’t like to see us men sitting around in our natural state of doing nothing we don’t need to.

Editor’s note: We men know we do it to conserve energy in case we’re needed in an emergency or to go out hunting and gathering or winning a college football game.

Either way, doing nothing in the meantime makes these naturally suspicious types wonder what we’re up to, too. And that means they’re forever out there dreaming up things to keep us busy and out of our natural habitat, which in a perfect world would consist mostly of fishing boats and pool halls.

I know some will scoff. Spot away. But I have evidence that parades are mostly run by women, and here it is: Pembroke and Richmond Hill have Christmas parades and winter festivals. Bryan County does not.

Why? Because women have considerable power in the two municipalities, either as elected or appointed civil servants. On the other hand, look at the Bryan County Commission. It’s all men.

Sure, there are women in seats of power at the county level, but when it comes to the power to organize a parade, well – no.

Now, some of us men may decide to attend a parade if someone nicely asks us to be grand marshal and throw in a couple of cold ones along the way, or a coupon for later, but that’s not the same as actually watching a parade, much less throw one.

Also, if we men decided we wanted to put on a parade, we’d do it on a work day so as not to ruin the weekend. You want a parade, do it on a Monday or Thursday and then take the rest of the week off.

And if we were in charge of having a parade, we’d try to get an Abrams tank in it or something, just for a little shock and awe. And maybe Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, and some sumo wrestlers to keep spectators in line, and a couple of cows or mules. And some baton twirls. You need baton swirls.

Oh, and lots of bagpipes. For my money, you can’t go wrong with bagpipes.

In fact, if I were in charge of a parade, it would be all bagpipes and cows and wrestlers and Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and batons riding mules, and there would be no fixed parade route or staging time or convoy interval or any of that nonsense.

Instead, the parade will start when it’s ready, go where it dares, and end when the last bagpipe runs out of air and all the Visigoths and Ostrogoths are driven back to Ohio.