How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

I despise parades. This comes as no surprise to anyone who's spoken to me for more than about five minutes. Okay, not really, but I'm pretty vocal about my disgust. I've even developed this stupid Pavlovian response. Whenever I hear anyone say the word "parade", I'm immediately compelled to say, "I hate parades". Doesn't matter if I've said it 500 times before. Nope. By God, that person needs to be reminded that I don't like them.

My sister had come over to stay with us while going to a job interview on Mercer Island, and since she was out with her prospective employer for dinner, we decided to take ourselves over to Senor Moose and enjoy some Mexican. The Moose is located in Ballard, and evidently we picked the day when everyone in the city decided to celebrate their Norwegian-ness right down the main drag. "What?" Yes. There is a parade about being Norwegian. It has been going on every year since Washington became a state, according to the newspaper. I didn't realize we had that many Norwegians around here, but apparently we do.

I had a bad feeling when we were driving down Market Street and I noticed a bunch of weird neon crap being waved around in the middle of the street about 15 blocks away. This feeling only got worse when I saw the orange traffic cones set up and the mobs of people flowing around them, and I immediately turned to Patrick and demanded he turn off the street so we wouldn't get anywhere near the mess. We went and found some parking, then walked up to our restaurant and miraculously got right in despite it being after 5:30 (everyone was at the cursed parade). This parade basically had everything that I hate about them: crowds, people wearing stupid clothes, marching bands, cannons, idiotic floats. I'm sure there was more, but that's all I happened to personally see.

 "How can you hate marching bands?!" Well, it goes like this: I was forced to be in them for years, since I was in band while growing up. Sadly, there wasn't a No Parades option when you decided to play a wind instrument, so at least once a year I was forced into an ugly, itchy, ill-fitting outfit and dragged around whatever city we were performing the stupid parade in that year. When I was in junior high, it wasn't quite as bad. The costumes were uglier, but we only had to be in one parade. (The white pants were a particularly nauseating touch. Have you ever seen anyone who wasn't a supermodel look good in white pants? I thought not.) In high school, however, we had to travel around with the stupid thing and march like fools down various main streets.

I remember one year it was absolutely pouring in Tacoma, yet BY GOD we were going to march anyway. Because who doesn't love a goddamn parade, no matter the weather? The water was cascading down the city's incredibly steep streets, but luckily our classy white rubber shoe covers and horrible hard band hats kept most of it off. The 30-lb (when dry) wool uniforms soaked up the moisture like sponges, and after that wonderful leg of the parade we got to enjoy the unique experience of 50 or so sweaty, ill-tempered teenagers in soggy wool outfits crammed onto a bus together. Fun!

Parades get in the way. You'll be minding your own business, trying to drive back to Seattle from Plains, Montana, and then you get to St. Regis. This town has exactly two streets, and one of them is full of a f---ing parade. So you sit there, since there is only the one intersection, for a good 20 minutes, until the incredibly slow moving parade of dudes in pickups throwing candy around has gone by.

I cannot explain to you in words just how much this fills me with rage. And it's not even useful rage. It is impotent rage. All I can do is sit there and stew in my own juices, fantasizing about throwing molotov cocktails into the parade. I can't drive right through them because I'd get locked up. Even writing about it makes my eyes get that crazy look in them. DIE, PARADES.

I wonder which stupid human it was who first decided that we'd all really enjoy standing around watching a long string of our own species wander by looking moronic in whatever getup they thought was appropriate and possibly getting hit in the head with foodstuffs. Whoever that was, I hope he got run over by a float and died horribly.