Getting what you parade for

MARY CHRISTMAS: If you can't laugh at  your sisters, what's the point of  having'em? Mary
on left, Norma and Charlene in the middle.
 

What follows are nine  things I learned marching in the 2024 Toronto Santa Claus parade as a snowman:

9)  Go before you go. At 11:05 a.m., and with a parade start time set at 11:30, I--fully rigged out in my snowman getup--realized I should have gone before I left home. Due to all the zippers, boots, hood, Velcro and whatnot, an activity that normally takes 30 seconds topped the 15-minute mark. At one point, I was standing at the urinal with the fluffy white snowman costume piled knee high round my ankles when a man behind me says, “You’re melting.”

8) Have a dad joke ready for emergencies. It's a personal policy of mine on a day-to-day basis to have a joke ready in case you need it, but in the excitement leading up to the parade, I forgot. But then, after marching for about five minutes,  the parade stopped. And I was within talking distance of the crowd. I suppose a person might possibly stand still, smile, wave and say Merry Christmas over and over again, but I'm me! Between the first and second stops, I came up with: “What does a Snowman's favourite meal? Frosted Flakes. What's a Snowman's least favourite meal? Tuna Melt."

 

7) Why do I always think of the right thing to say too late?  In a work meeting, I'll sit there and think "everybody here sounds smart and every thing I say sounds dorky." Seven and a half minutes after the meeting's done, I'll come up with zingers; clever comments that would have, moments earlier, morphed me into c-suite material. But nope. Never happens at the meeting. Same thing with my parade jokes. I was already ordering a main course at our post-parade meetup at Queen's Pasta restaurant when I assembled the bones of a joke ending with "What? And give up snow biz!???" 

GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND MERCH: The cool
tee was the handiwork of Frosty Fan Jon Butler!

6) Real show biz must be hard for other reasons than you might think. When I first tried the Frosted Flakes line, kids in the crowd laughed and the snowperson beside me leaned over and said she thought it was funny. Pretty sure she didn't find it so hilarious the next 600 or so times. 

5) A cure for belated brilliance syndrome (BBS) would be a billion-Bitcoin invention. This just came to me: "My wife thinks I'm flaky." And now this: "I feel like I'm on the verge of a meltdown!" See what I mean?

4) You never know where you're going to find something that makes you happy. Take, for example, the word "of". This whole parade thing was my sister Charlene's idea. She marched as a clown in last year's parade and had such a great time she talked me, and my  sisters Norma and Mary, to join this year. So, I got to say I marched with three "of" my older sisters; not my three older sisters. See what I'm getting at here? My fourth older sister, Bertholde, stayed home in Sudbury with our brother Alex. Imagine a guy my age still having siblings to spare! And them goofy enough to want to join in a Santa parade.

3) Some clowns have more fun than others. I was a snowman. Norma and Charlene were upside down clowns and Mary an upside-up clown. The upside-down clowns were crowd favourites, but  they didn't get to tell jokes and high-five dozens of thousands of mitted hands like I did. Before the parade got underway, somebody mentioned that we marchers were not to touch the people on the sidelines, which would have meant no high-fives or mitt-slapping. I could have asked somebody in authority if I’d heard correctly but decided I would pretend I hadn’t heard anything. 

2) I watch too much Netflix. Did you know that there's a Christmas feelgood movie streaming this month called Hot Frosty about a beautiful widow named Kathy who's working hard to keep her daughter and friends in Christmas moods even though she's lonely and her pals are trying to set her up but she's too busy but then she magically turns a snowman into a hunky boyfriend and, well never mind, it's just that I knew about Hot Frosty and maybe just maybe I was hoping would connect me with the movie title? Like maybe yell it from the crowd? My sister Mary mentioned Hot Frosty but she's my sister; it's not the same. Was I disappointed? No I was not. I am too mature for that. 

1)  If this last one isn't proof the magic of Christmas is real, I'll eat my snowman  hat. “It’s not bad now but I bet it’s going to be bad soon,” is what I thought for the first kilometre or two of the parade. I was dead certain that I'd be tired and cranky and sore at parade's end, that I'd be itching, desperate even, to join my sisters for beer and Italian food, as we'd planned. I was wrong! The parade was nearing the final corner, I thought, "I don't want this to end!" I could have walked another parade! Turns out, prancing around and joking and high-fiving strangers and making an ass of myself in front of 750,000 happy people is what I was put on earth to do. 

Imagine me, preferring to march than go for Italian food and beer. Like I said, if that's not magic I don't know what is. I sure hope you get to experience the magic of the season his year, like Frosty did. And like he plans on doing again in 2025. Merry everything!