Parade of craziness

This year instead of watching the parade, I was actually part of the parade. (These girls in the photo were on the float right in front of us. We sat behind them for a LONG time before the parade finally got moving.) And even though I walked beside The Telegraph's vehicles the whole time, I couldn't tell you who was on the sidelines at the parade or how long it all lasted. That's because we were handing out mardi gras beads with The Telegraph's logo on them, along with candy and shirts and Belle magazines the whole time. Basically, we had two drivers and two people out on the street, three if you include our photographer Grant Blankenship, who was sweet enough to follow us and help us out when we came across him. First of all, technically we are not supposed to "throw" items into the crowd - we have to hand them out. But our beads kept getting tangled up and kids kept running out into the street to get some - even "grownups" were running into the street for beads. It's no fun getting mobbed, let me tell you.

And this leads me to one of my biggest issues with the parade. If everyone in the parade was allowed to throw out candy, then a lot more more would actually throw out candy, and then no one would be running into the street for candy. And what's wrong with throwing out candy? A parade is just not a good parade when you can't get candy out of it - that's whole reason I loved parades as a kid. I'm sorry, but really, look at our parades. They mostly consist of a bunch of random people sitting in cars riding by. That's not fun to watch. If there were more actual floats, that would be something. But we don't generally have a lot of floats in the parades that ride through downtown Macon. That's why we need candy. Why can't we all just let the people have their candy?