Before the Parade Passes By

by Stephanie Black

My niece's high school marching band was among the participants in the inaugural parade yesterday—yay, Katie! She and her band-mates traveled from sunny Arizona to freeze their tubas off in D.C. I wasn’t sure exactly what time she would march, and it took a looooonggg time for the parade to get started after it was going to start “momentarily”. After nearly three hours, (okay, I napped during the first part) the station I was watching started to wrap up their broadcast, and I freaked—her band hadn’t marched yet! Frantically, I called my sister to tell her the station I was watching was ending their coverage and where could I go to see the parade, and she said CNN, and—this will tell you how technologically clueless I am when it comes to television, cable, TiVo, that kind of thing—I had no idea how to find CNN. So I tried to find the broadcast, but alas, all was in vain—her band marched and I missed it.

Grrrr. After all that time, I missed it!

But all was not lost. My sister later found some links on the internet and sent them to us, so I got to see my niece’s band march after all. I couldn’t tell which of the tuba players was her, but it was still awesome. Isn’t that the coolest thing ever that her band got to march in the inaugural parade? It was a huge honor for them.

Good wishes and good luck to President Obama. He’s got a tough job. I’d never, ever, want to be president of the United States. Talk about a stressful job. You carry the weight of a nation and more on your shoulders, while people lie in wait to tear apart everything you say and do. How many of us could stand to have our every careless word repeated and torn apart in the media? No, thanks. My life is not always perfectly photogenic, though, of course, my kitchen floor is always spotless and my laundry put away. Ha ha! Had you going there for a minute, didn't I?

My husband and I have been asked to participate in the Marriage and Family Relations Sunday school class—no, this isn’t a personal commentary on our family; they want everyone to take the class, so they’re moving through the ward alphabetically. (We’re in a class full of B’s, with one set of stray H’s). For the first class we were asked to bring an item that represented something our family did well. I asked my daughter for ideas and she said promptly, “Bring something broken.” She suggested a TV remote with the back panel and battery missing, or a scratched DVD. It was a valid suggestion. We can break absolutely anything. We can also lose things, but I suppose it would be harder to bring a lost item as a visual aid (ha!). We’re also good at racking up library fines and collecting crumbs, pens, and Legos under the couch cushions. I was cleaning out under the cushions the other day in search of my daughter’s CTR ring (which she referred to as her “Precious”), and though I didn’t find the ring, I did find plenty of crud. I’m betting our couch weighs twice as much as it did when we bought it. Some people have skeletons in their closets--we have crud in the couch.

Either way, I'm not letting the media get their hands on this story.