The parade marches right by our house. It really is one of my favorite things about living in Normal Park. We are the practice route for three different marching bands. EMU will go through and collect coins as they serenade the neighborhood, West Middle School always marches by when they practice for the various holiday parades. But the best is homecoming! The Ypsilanti High School Marching Band is preceded by a cop car. The four floats come after the cheerleaders. And the homecoming court sit in convertibles and wave. This year we were sad because "Casual Friday" has apparently taken over the world. There were no Fab gowns or tiaras, just jeans and too much eyeliner--sad.
This year we tried something new. We gathered all the sharpies in the house together and grabbed some printer paper and scored the floats as they went by.
Olympic style judging for decidedly NOT olympic quality floats. Whatever happened to the pride that existed when I was in HS? Man-- we were cutthroat with our twisted paper napkins and chicken wire creations. My junior year our theme was "Junk Food" and my class (led by yours truly) created a huge lever that was an arm wearing Vassar's orange and back football jersey sleeve and dipping a purple (Caro--the enemy's colors) Nacho chip into the dip. Our banners read "Hey Caro! Winning's NACHO style! It was awesome. We won. It was a hoot. Each class is (frosh, sophomores etc) is expected to design and create a float to enter in the traditional competition. We usually have a hell of a time just identifying the "theme" this year we thought it was video games. The lamest (I scored it a -2) this year was a poorly painted illegible banner in the back of a pick up truck. I guess it just isn't cool if you can't text message it. But our judging was fun. The kids loved it. The marching float constructors loved it. Very silly. we will definitely do it again next year!
