The Big Parade

This is part of a series of rants I'm getting out of my system before New Year's hits.... bear with me.

In late November, we took the kids in to see the Santa Claus parade. I'd say for the most part we had a great (or at least good) time, but as always there's gotta be those who ruin the fun.

Apparently there was something around 400,000 people wandering the streets and all trying to find a good spot to watch the parade... not going to happen.

Even worse, there were people bringing those double-wide strollers that barely fit on regular sidewalks and they're trying to make their way through the crowds. Ugh. Not going to happen either. But that also doesn't mean people should shove their way past and the mother looked up at one guy and said "I'm trying to make my way through too." He just turned to her and said "Fuck you." Now THAT's Christmas spirit for ya. I was quite tempted to punch the guy in the face, but before I had a chance, this lady lost all patience and just rammed her way through the crowd, bashing everyone's ankles (including mine) along the way.

Getting a spot next to the street was extremely difficult, especially when there's adults sitting on the curb. I mean, c'mon, adults sitting on the curb!?!!? Grow up, stand up, and move back and let the kids enjoy the parade from the curb instead. The only good thing this couple did was hand back any candies and coupons handed out during the parade. I'm sure my son left more than one candy cane-sticky handprint on the back of the guy's jacket whenever my boy leaned over to look for another float coming down the street.

Now, I know it's become imbedded in some Asian cultures that pushing and shoving is par for the course, just based on the crowded population alone. In Canada, it's quite the opposite. See, we have --and appreciate-- lots of elbow room, and when we packed in and someone starts shoving, it's frowned upon.

To start.

You do it once, then the average Canadian will shrug it off and try to help accomodate a little more elbow room. You do it twice... Well, see, the other thing Canada is known for is hockey. In hockey, the elbows come up. They come up often and they come up hard. And as the lady, who kept shoving into the square of my back for over an hour, discovered: Canadian elbows can also be sharp and quite pain ful when they do come up.

But this wasn't even the worst of it. The company that sponsored the parade had goodie bags to hand out, but as the crowd got to be too big, they just put cases of the freebies out for people to grab.

And grab they did.

I managed to get a bag full, but that was just before I saw people pushing and shoving to fill backpacks full of it. Then there was one of the sponsor employees cleaning up a tent and was actually shoved over the table by people rushing to grab the freebie. I saw one tent start moving from the pressure of people around it. And what were they after?

Cracker Jacks. Bags of Cracker Jacks.

Disgusting display of 'civilization' when people are shoved aside for bags of Cracker Jacks.

Finally.... I'd love to know where the communication breakdown happened, but... you'd think *someone* in management at the 2 local McDonald's would clue in to have extra staff working when there's 400,000 lining the streets. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. We were going to have something for lunch from McD's, but they only had 2 cashiers working and about 400 people in line. As it was, I stood in line at Tim Horton's for 45 minutes to order us lunch. My wife started to worry that I'd abandoned them.

One more thing. I remember going to parades when I was a kid and sitting on the curb watching the floats go by. When did it become "acceptable" for people to constantly walk along the sides of the parade? There were always people walking and blocking views, or crossing the street in between floats. Sometimes, they didn't cross in time and a float (a float) would have to slow down to avoid running over them.

Merry Christmas, morons.

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