On Saturday, Ruby and I went downtown to the Mardi Gras parade. Edward and Simone were napping, but Ruby really wanted to go, so off we went. Never mind that Mardi Gras was actually a week and a half earlier. Who cares about boring specifics like the date when there is a parade to be had!
There was a designated “family area” on one side of one block of the parade route, I suppose to prevent my four year old daughter from being exposed to all the drunken flashing that would be going on during the festivities. We never actually found the family area, but we did find the festivities, and that was good enough for me.
We were fairly safe from the more adult pleasures, even in the non-family area. For one thing, we live in Vermont, not New Orleans. There is a reason people do not associate drunken booby waving with Vermont in early March. It’s kind of hard to expose yourself when you are dressed in layers. Also, there are not a lot of open bar windows and sidewalk cafes operating at this time, so I didn’t really see any public drunkenness either. I think that, in terms of national Mardis Gras celebrations, Vermont IS the family area.
The parade was led by its grand marshal, Chewbacca, and consisted mostly of brightly decorated floats throwing beads. Well, beads and Moon Pies. A little candy too I guess, but mostly beads. Ruby ended up with 12 or 14 bead necklaces, but that was only because the teenage girl standing next to us had much longer arms than Ruby and was snagging everything that came within a five foot radius of us. We could have easily gotten 30 if it wasn’t for the violently flailing arms of the that girl. Eventually she punched me in the head in a quest to steal some beads that were headed our way, and she almost felt bad about that, so the girl kept her distance a little bit more after that, and even offered a strand of beads to Ruby.
Ruby’s favorite float was, of course, the Angry Birds float, but really she liked any float that was throwing things at her, which was all of them. No fire trucks, no marching bands, no local beauty queens, and no classic cars, this parade was all floats. But the floats are the best part anyway, right? There were some interesting ones to be sure. One that caught my eye was the “Sexual Health Rock Stars,” which I can only imagine got a warm welcome from the family area.
I also forgot to mention that we got an awesome parking spot only three blocks from the parade route, so it was an easy walk back to the car afterward. All in all, the day was a big win, even without the inebriated nudity. Happy belated Mardi Gras everyone!
