Christmas Parade

I was in my town's Christmas parade yesterday. I was pouring at first. I was with my dance studio, and as soon as it was time for us to start moving, it started POURING. We were going uphill, it was pouring, and I was soggy. Then in our dance, there's a kickline. Don't know why we're kicklinging but alright. We were supposed to MOVE and kickline, appearently. But then when it didn't work and everyone's kicks were awful, they told us to stop and do the kicks THEN start walking. That worked. 

Right when we started dancing, the music cut out. History repeats itself. This happened a few years ago, and everyone just kept going and started singing. It was honestly a lot of fun, and we talk about it all the time. So it was kind of funny that in my last parade, it happened again. That made me kind of sad, in like a nostalgic way. Everyone singing and dancing. It didn't last very long but.

 I also almost wiped out 5 times. The second time we were doing the dance, I noticed that one of my shoes had come untied. Sucks but not the end of the world.

By the end of that song, both shoes were untied.

I almost tripped on my shoes twice, once on the lines on the road since the water made them slippery, once on my pants (we had to have flared pants and I wanted to actively jump off a cliff I think they're so ugly, and the ones I have are SO LONG that they GO UNDER MY FEET and they're muddy and gross and murderous) and once when we were doing the kicks I almost lost my footing and fell backwards.

This sounds like a horror story, I know, but it was actually really fun. I always love being in the parade. Dancing down the street, I don't know, there's something so fun about it. I'm so sad it's my last time, but I'm not like crying or anything. It's just not hitting me. It feels like it hasn't sunk in that it's over, even though I know it is. Better to not be sad about an ending though, right? I had a fun night last night. After we got going, the rain stopped, and it was nice and warm (for once) so it wasn't miserable. Nice to be able to feel my toes. There was one year that the parade got delayed because the school buses weren't there, and there was four inches of snow on the ground with the sidewalks iced over. I was pretty young, maybe like 6th grade? My feet went so numb, they hurt to walk on. We were on the sidewalks which were basically just ice, and I think I had converse on, so there was no insulation there. The other dancers played this game called "kumcha" but I didn't know how to play it, so I wasn't allowed. Everyone was crying, it was awful. I think we stood out there wearing dance costumes for like an hour before dancing. My hands wouldn't move, it was miserable. It was also pretty cold last year. It took forever for me to be able to move my hands again. So, in all honestly, I'll take the warmth and the rain. This year, we also didn't wear costumes like normally. We wore pants and crewnecks with white turtlenecks underneath, to stay warm. Go figure the one year it's ACTUALLY warm we're dressed warmly. 

Beforehand, we also had a flashmob. My town's pretty well known for this one super old actor who was in this popular but really old Christmas movie, so the flashmob started out with two people in the middle of the street dressed as the main characters from the movie dancing. It took place in the 20s, so it was a 20s dance. Then, eventaully, the dancers slowly filed in. We had partners, since it was partially a partner dance, and my friend and I said we were gonna hide in the back since we didn't know it. We got pushed to the front line. I think we might've been further up than the actors. It was chaotic. We forgot the dance. But, hey, it was silly and fun. We'd been sent a video to learn the dance from since the town hired professioal choreographers to coreograph it, and there were a lot of charleston dance moves in it. She pronounced charleston "chAarL-sten" and it was really funny. Anyway.