Last weekend we got to watch the Memorial Day parade in South Portland Maine. Every town and village I'd guess ran a parade at about the same time and an air force refueling tanker flew overhead giving them each an overpass. When I bought waving flags, a lady told me to have a happy holiday but it was the slightest bit weird in that I didn't know what background of cultural memory or emotion was exactly associated with the day. It was too happy for our Remembrance Day and far too sunny. I was good at flaggy wavey, however, so that was good.
Comments
Gorthos - June 3, 2007 8:15 AM
Hrmm.. I don't like parades. Even as a kid I didn't. I guess it relates direcly to my lack of a feel for a need to be part of a community.. Or I just don't like standing at the side of a road with a bunch of strangers waving at th eoccasional person I vaguely know riding a float or in a car.. Thankfully my wife doesn't like em either so unless the kids hear about their existence from others, we blissfully pretend they aren't there and don't feel guilty about not taking them.
Alan - June 3, 2007 8:44 AM
That's too bad. Like not liking swimming or cheese.
Gorthos - June 3, 2007 8:56 AM
Hrmm.. very philosophical way of looking at it. How would I feel if tomorrow I awoke and disliked the taste of cheese yet today I could eat cheese and crackers, Wallace and Grommit-like, for every meal with my tea.. sad and painful
Then again, if one has never enjoyed something, one cannot conceive of the sadness in its lack in ones life..
So long as you and you had fun, that is good.
Hrmm.. Maybe I'll take the kids to the next parade in Kingston just in case they actually DO like them and may hate me in older life for truncating the existance of such from their lives.
Alan - June 3, 2007 9:11 AM
Be careful - you may be suffering from CPF: Canadian parade fraud. If you have only been shown groups of commercial floats with a low or non-existent percentage of marching bands, you may think you have seen parades when you never have. I recommend one dose of the Cape Vincent French Festival on 14 July 2007. I love Cape Vincent - just the other side of the Wolfe Island and Horne Ferries. Best of all, except maybe for the fact Napoleon leads the parade, is that all the good Canadian marching bands from Eastern Ontario join in. We went in 2004.