Eagles parade! Military parade! I hate a parade!
A lot of parade talk lately. Thursday was the Eagles Super Bowl championship parade in Philadelphia. I would’ve needed a five-figure number to go to it. Yep. A cool $10,000 would’ve made it worth my while to stand in the cold while a million (two million? three million? five million?) drunk people cheered slow-moving convertibles and flatbed trucks with de-helmeted football players in them.
I don’t care for parades. Come to think of it, even if there was a parade in my honor, the Jeff Edelstein Parade, but I was told I’d have to sit on the side of the road to witness it? While risking someone puking on my jacket? Ten grand. Minimum.
You know why?
Because I hate parades. I really do. This is not posturing for the purpose of column material. I have a visceral hatred for parades. I find them — and there’s really no other word here — stupid.
The big ones, the giant ones, like the Eagles parade? Forget it. The crowds are enough to give me the willies. The idea of all that humanity, shoulder to shoulder, butt to butt … egad. Too much. Can’t handle it.
And can you imagine trying to get home from that parade? Good heavens. So it would be $10,000 plus a limo ride.
Then there’s the small parades. The little parades. The town parades.
Hard pass.
I mean, come on. Standing on the side of a road while baton twirlers or marching bands or Little League teams meander by? I’d rather go to the dentist. Being literal here. I’d rather get a teeth cleaning that sit through another parade. Cavity? Done. Book it. Fill a cavity, I’ll skip the parade. (I’ll draw the line at root canal. I’m not a masochist.)
And despite all this vitriol toward parades, would you believe I’ve been marching — marching! — in a parade the last few years?
Yep. Every year I’m forced at wifepoint to march in our town’s Memorial Day parade. “It’s for the kids,” she says. If I had know I’d have to partake in a parade, I would’ve drawn up a legal contract before we had children explaining this cat don’t do parades.
Just the word itself gives me the shivers.
Of course, the other big parade news this week is President Donald Trump’s desire to see a full-bore military parade. You look at history, we don’t do full-bore military parades unless we win a war. I am not in favor in seeing ballistic missiles driven down Pennsylvania Avenue. I won’t go to it, I won’t watch it on TV. Unless Trump is wearing a Sgt. Schultz-style helmet. Then I’m all in. I’ll watch. (And by the way, don’t @ me with “you’re anti-military!” garbage. I am most certainly not anti-military. The jobs our enlisted men and women do are beyond me. They are heroes, every last one of them. I just don’t think they should be forced to strut like a peacock for Cadet Bone Spurs, you dig?) (Shout out to Sen. Tammy Duckworth on the nickname.)
I’m going to talk about my wife again.
Every year, she wants to go to the Philadelphia Thanksgiving parade, and every year I say “no no no no no no.” Seriously. Wake up at like 4 a.m., get the kids in the car, drive to Philly, fight through who-knows-what all so I can … so I can what? Stand on the side of the road and be cold and angry and I really need to find a toilet and this is how divorces happen, isn’t it?
Fair question: Has there ever been a parade I enjoyed?
One.
Morristown St. Patrick’s Day parade, 1998. I was living above a funeral home with four other people along the parade route (yes, a funeral home, story for another time) and so we had a party there and I glimpsed the parade out the window, and, not for nuthin’, I also hooked up with one of the party-goers, and she was pretty hot, so there’s that.
Oh wow. Just popped into my head: If going to a parade was a prerequisite for sex, I’d join a monastery.
Jeff Edelstein is a columnist for The Trentonian. He can be reached at jedelstein@trentonian.com, facebook.com/jeffreyedelstein and @ jeffedelstein on Twitter.