What To Do When You Accidentally Get Stuck In A Parade

May 11, 2022 by , featured in Lifestyle
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First things first: Don’t feel bad about ending up in a parade when you were really just minding your business. According to a recent poll, 60% of people in parades are there accidentally. There is no one piece of advice that is universal for all parade-related problems, but I’ve come up with different types of advice depending on your specific issue. Statistically, there are three reasons why you might be stuck in a parade:

1. A Parade Spontaneously Broke Out Around You

This is the most common reason for getting stuck in a parade. You were wandering around, living your life in Jesus Christ’s America, and a parade broke out when you weren’t paying attention. Maybe you had headphones in, or maybe you were just thinking your thoughts. You’re not the reason for the parade, but you are caught up in it now, and you’re indistinguishable from the people around you who are there on purpose. Parades can take anywhere from four to infinity hours, and you cannot afford to lose that time, because you matter.

Advice: Fight Your Way Out

In prison and kindergarten, they tell you to find the biggest, toughest guy on the first day and beat the shit out of them. This is also true in parades, except no one is tough in parades, so just pick anyone, beat them up, and watch the rest of the mice quiver. It’s the only way to establish yourself as the most dominant presence in the parade. The other parade participants will immediately switch their allegiance to you (there’s no loyalty in parades), so now you can dictate whatever the parade does next, including “disband immediately so I can get to work.” There’s a chance that some of the more aimless and submissive parade attendants will follow you to work and celebrate you for the next several years, but they’re harmless and soft, and most can be scared off with a water gun.

2. You’re Fleeing Something

Parades provide great cover if you’re fleeing the police, an ex, a person you’ve conned, or even just some mean-looking squirrels. Hiding out in a parade is great because you can disappear inconspicuously into a crowd with a lot of distractions and also (and mostly) because you can escape without having to run a lot. The combination of crowd coverage and not running is why most people hide out in parades and not, say, marathons.

Maybe you’re in a parade because you’re fleeing something or someone. I don’t need to know what you’re fleeing, and honestly, it’s probably better if I don’t, because if you’re fleeing the scene of a crime and I know about it, I will testify against you, very quickly and without a lot of pressure at all. I get in a lot of scraps and I’ve found that narcing, flipping, and snitching are perfect for getting me out of them. People like to say “snitches get stitches,” but literally every time someone has said that to me, I’ve snitched on them, and they’re in jail and I’m out here skipping down the street without a care in the world, so you tell me who the real snitch is. (Real quick, though, if you do tell me who the real snitch is? I will snitch on them. For snitching.)

Advice: Welcome to Your New Life, Buddy!

You really have to ride this out. You have a short-term advantage, in that your pursuer either can’t spot you in the crowd or won’t shoot or attack you because the crowd creates too many witnesses, but your pursuer has the long-term advantage in that parades usually go in a straight line and he can just, like, wait at the end of it for you. The trick at this point is to just commit and never stop parading. If someone in the parade asks “Hey, when did you get here, fella?” act surprised (but calm) and say “I have always been parade.” When it looks like the parade is winding down, convince the rest of the paraders that quitting is the business of cowards and charlatans and that the real parade is the one that never ends. If anyone questions you, accuse them of losing sight of why they started parading in the first place and tell them loudly and in front of others that they’ve “changed.”

If you’re very persuasive or just, like, super hot, you’ll convince enough of the people around you to never stop parading. You’ll march and chant forever. You’ll lose all sense of time. You’ll rarely eat, and you’ll find some language to explain how pooping and peeing while walking is somehow “part of” this particular parade. You won’t be able to live a normal life or see your friends and family again, but you will eventually grow to accept and even love your new life within the constant parade of your design, complete with your new parade spouse and whatever parade float you designate as your god.

The point is, your pursuers or captors or the police will never be able to take you down if you’re always—always—parading.

3. You Thought It Was a Line for Something Neat

This is you. You saw a large gathering of people who seemed excited, and you thought they were lined up for a movie or a new phone release or a celebrity autograph or a sale of some kind, you thought “that sounds fun,” and you joined in, having done no further investigation into the matter. You were just excited to be a part of something. You realized sometime later (an embarrassing amount of time later, actually) and with the labored assistance of several dozen context clues you’d previously missed that this isn’t a line at all but, in fact, a parade honoring a specific holiday or group of people. Now you’re embarrassed and looking for a polite way out. That’s you. That’s who you are.

Advice: I Honestly Hate You

Listen to me, because this is important, and I want you to really pay attention to it. I do not respect you, and I have no sympathy for you. Your specific predicament has only been made possible by a combination of two undeniable truths about you: One, you lack a basic curiosity of your surrounding areas and general context clues, and two, your time is so valueless that you were prepared to wait in a strange line for an indeterminate amount of time for a product, event, or opportunity despite not knowing what it actually was. You waited on a line because other people were waiting on it, and you’d rather be included than be yourself. You sought to piggyback on the passion of strangers instead of having any real interests or causes of your own.

You’re disgusting to me, I have no interest in helping you, and I hope you die in that parade.

Image: Pexels/Pexels


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