Parade CV

I may have accidentally agreed to walk through Burnaby for three hours this Saturday in chicken wings and what has only been described to me as a "fun hat". This will somehow not be my most demeaning parade experience.

As I like to work into every conversation I have, I used to work on a honey farm. This may conjure images of smiling, hearty staff clad overalls and pigtails, brows a-glow from an honest day’s work, hawking golden jars from a charming roadside stand, plain but sturdy. In reality, the fluorescent-lit retail front for the commercial pollination operation was manned by a bunch of feeble twenty-somethings and owned by an enthusiastic former police officer who subsisted solely on bee pollen and four hours of daily sleep. Like any independent businessman, he spent a lot of time scheming. “We need to install a tarantula habitat for the kids to look at when they visit! And we’ll build a tea house right next to it!” he would explain to us while emailing blueberry farmers on his Blackberry and driving the forklift to unload an order of jars. “Also, please buy 6 litres of chilli for our festival concession stand; we’ll put some honey in it and say it’s a special recipe and it’ll sell out like crazy. People love eating chilli in July!”

Along these lines of promotional reasoning, we wound up booking a spot in Cloverdale’s annual Santa Claus Parade, the theme of which appeared to be Big Rigs Covered in Lights. Our white company PT Cruiser didn’t really inspire awe in comparison. Cloverdale is the kind of town where Big Rigs matter, too: they are a weird patch of Middle America in the centre of Western Canadian suburban sprawl. The resident teenagers chew tobacco. The neighbourhood is mostly known for its flea market, annual rodeo, and cameos on WB superhero teen dramas. Now you’re all caught up.

While we may not have had the star power of those stupid show-off truckers, what we did have was a second-hand queen bee costume made of Styrofoam and fleece (blue, inexplicably), and boxes and boxes of honeysticks. I was nominated to inhabit the suit, while two of my co-workers donned beekeepers’ garb and another drove the logo car alongside. We would hand out honeysticks and not run over any children. It seemed simple enough. Unfortunately, though, as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity states, parades move faster than they appear to from the sidelines. And as you also probably recall, his theory of Winter Coats Worn Underneath a Styrofoam Body Suit proposes that you will be very, very sweaty very quickly as you sprint through the streets trying to keep up with the rest of the pack. Empirically, I can say that both hypotheses check out.

Pre-parade, armed with smiles and gluctose.

My vision limited to the queen’s gaping, lipsticked maw, I probably stabbed a few children in the face as I briskly jogging through the black December night, attempting to dispense treats and not get run over by a glowing-green 18 wheeler. My beekeeper comrades seemed to fare better. Dressed in breathable cotton jumpers and mesh hoods, they spread joy, not terror to the public. I am disoriented in my now-sauna-like mascot prison, unsure of where the parade was going. I have been running steadily after what I am hoping are the taillights of our Cruiser and I’m sweating profusely. The sweat is plastering my hair to my head and my bare palms (which admittedly, do not do much for the overall realism of the costume, but comically oversized gloves were not provided) are making the honeysticks slippery and gross. I thrust them into the general direction of toddler-shaped people; I keep forgetting that mascots don’t talk, which is particularly unfortunate due to my exercise-induced heavy breathing and gasping. “Come visit soon!” I wheeze creepily, the suit’s dummy arms (the attention paid to anatomical detail by the costume-maker was impressive, particularly considering their laissez-faire attitude towards the general consensus that bees are “yellow” and “black”) accidentally brushing a snowpant-clad leg, causing parents concern that perhaps this so-called “honey farm” was a threat to the family values time-honoured by the Road Truckerz Association.

Co-worker, also terror-running.

Eventually, every parade must come to an end, and no one was gladder than I. We peeled off our costumes – some more odourous than others – and piled back into the car, sucking on any leftover honeysticks that weren’t embedded in some poor Cloverdalian’s eye. The line to leave the parade essentially retraced the route it had taken, but with fewer lawn chair spectators. It turned out to be six blocks.

In sum, I am very cautious about the amount of "fun" this so-called "fun hat" will be providing this weekend. Stay tuned . . .