For reasons I don't need to get into here (read: hungover and exhausted), I chose to stay in and watch Game 5 of the World Series all alone on Monday night. When Brian Wilson struck the final batter out, I could hear the whoops and screams and fireworks from my apartment, but I opted to enjoy a bit of it on television and then go to bed. At 9:45.
There's a good chance I just lost you as a reader forever (like that didn't happen when I stopped blogging for an entire three months?), but if you remember me from blog posts past, you'll understand why it was I was so determined to make it to yesterday's victory parade. Party without me once, shame on you. Party without me twice? I might as well move to the suburbs, get knocked up and start snacking on Ho Hos.
I don't work on Wednesdays, so I didn't have to take the day off or anything monetarily drastic like that. I *did* have to move my 11 a.m. tennis lesson to 8 a.m., but I feel like complaining about that is sort of like complaining about how when I was totally unemployed, it was really annoying to have to leave my apartment when the cleaning lady came. What? It was.
Anyway, the cleaning lady comes on Tuesdays, not Wednesdays, and now I work on Tuesdays, so thank god THAT life issue has been solved.
Where were we? Oh right. The Parade.
It was unseasonably warm in San Francisco yesterday. I mean, 82 degrees and sunny in November is pretty amazing... until you remember it was 50 degrees and foggy all of June, July and August (yup, I'm STILL bitching about the crappy weather we had all summer; deal with it). And since I didn't want to be hot on the crowded MUNI ride, or the jam-packed streets, or, um, the bar afterwards, I opted to don a Giants' t-shirt, jean skirt and flip flops. And yes, I just said jean skirt. And no, I wasn't drinking. Though I wish I had been so that I'd have an excuse for even owing such a thing.
Ohmygod, I don't blog for months and then it takes me seven years to get to the point...
The N-Judah ride downtown was pretty amusing. And, yes, when I used the word amusing in that last sentence, I assumed you are the type of person who finds things like getting donkey punched or gang raped to be super funny. At one point, two stops into my journey, we did move for twenty minutes because some moron pulled the emergency "open the door" lever while we're in the tunnel. I actually don't know if that's a real thing, but a door was open and it wasn't our driver's fault (according to her) and so we just sat there. And sat there. And sat there. Except I was standing. So it was even suckier.
The great thing about our driver, however, was her excellent communication skills. She turned that mircrophone on and just NEVER turned it off. We had updates about the trains in front of us, how the fat ass in the back had better get off the stairs so they could come up, how if we didn't step away from the door it would never close and we would never move, how she was skipping the Montgomery Street station due to overcrowding ... and sure, she wasn't even sure if we could hear her (I know this because after every announcement she said, "I don't even know if you can hear me"), but I really appreciated her diligence. And I also appreciated that, because she never turned her mic off, I got to her her slurp EVERY LAST SIP out of that ginormous Big Gulp she was working on. Seriously. I've never heard anyone fight for the last drop like that woman did. It made me feel good to be on a MUNI train driven by someone with such determination. I knew she was going to get me to my destination if it was the only thing she did all day. And based on how slowly that train moved, I'm going to assume that it was.
Forty-five minutes into what should have been a fifteen minute ride, I arrived at Civic Center. And, ohmygodwhatiswrongwiththeworld, it was... yeah. Have you ever BEEN to a parade? Because I have. We had them every 4th of July when I was kid growing up in Greensboro, North Carolina. You'd stand on the street and PEOPLE WOULD THROW CANDY AT YOU and hey! If you wanted, you could even put on a costume and join in! Which I did once. Which is embarrassing and awkward to admit. But I was four, so I didn't know better. And yes, my costume was some big brown polka dot bonnet thing and oh, whatever... The point is: It was laid back and nostalgic... friendly and heart-warming... just like all parades!
Yeah... this was JUST like that. Except with A LOT MORE OF THE POT. And The People. And The Pushing. And The Crowding. And the sun-beating-down-on-fat-men-and-making-them-really-sweaty-and-smelly-ing.
But that's cool. I was totally down to deal with it because hey! It was THE WORLD CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS! And when those players came by me on that float, all winner-ish and shit, I was totally ready to stand there with my hands cupped, in perfect position to catch some miniature Jujubes.
So anyway, I met my friend, Maura, and we made our way through the, oh, you know, ONE MILLION PEOPLE who also decided that going to this little parade thingy might be fun. We finally got to "a spot," couldn't move any more, and realized it was about as close as we were going to get to the action. And hey, I'm not complaining. It was a perfectly decent spot. We were probably, um, like... 250 yards away from the actual parade route? If we stood on our tippie-toes, we could just barely make out the very top of the floats that let us know who was in them. We saw such riveting float titles as: "Bat Boys" and "Players Wives" and "We Are Super Wealthy People So We Get to Ride This Float Because WE CAN..." And sure, I couldn't see who was actually IN these floats, but it didn't matter because I was just positive they were going to use an air-compressed shooter-thingy (that's totally the official name) to make sure those Tootsie Rolls were widely dispersed throughout the crowd.
And yes, I realized we'd have a much better view, and chance at better candy, if we were able to climb on to something. Like a street lamp. Or a fence. Or a tree. Or a news van. But sadly, we were stuck on the ground. Because this moron (that's me!) wore a teenie-tiny jean skirt. And while I might love candy, I mean, The Giants, I don't love them enough to show a million people my 33-year-old ass. And fine: Maura refused to let me sit on her shoulders no matter how much I begged.
So there we were... waiting for something--ANYTHING--to happen... when the crowd started to push forward, as can happen in those types of situations. (I have no idea if that is true having never been in one of those types of situations, but I felt pretty confident at the time that was how crowds work.) So it made sense when suddenly there was a slightly overweight older man in a Bermuda shirt and sweatpant shorts pushing himself up against me. Crowd surge = bodies touching in uncomfortable ways. I don't like it, but it's the way the world works. And by "the world," I hope I mean "parades." Also, I vaguely remembered that part of it from my childhood. And yes, that was a pedophile joke in the middle of my Giants' Victory Parade post.
So, there I was, minding my own business with a fat man pressed against me doing what anyone would do in that situation... Absolutely nothing. I mean, sure I moved forward a little bit, but I legitimately assumed the guy was just getting shoved into me by the crowd. But only a few seconds passed before he was back and that's when I started to wonder if there was actually a creey old due rubbing his penis against my ass while I was wearing a short jean skirt in a million-person crowd. Because, I mean, that isn't something that actually happens, right?
Wrong. About a minute later (and YES, I was so convinced I was being insane that I let this go on for an entire minute), Maura, who was standing behind me, suddenly grabbed my arm and was like, "Um, you need move. Now." She took one glance at the dude, realized he was vigorously dry humping my ass, and brought the whole thing to a stop. (In my defense, and just so you don't think I'm totally naive, even she said that at first she thought he might just be rocking back and forth because he was drunk. But then, um, well, yeah. No. Not so much.)
By the way, remember the part where I told you he was wearing sweat pants? Yeah. Ew. GROSS.
After that, I pretty much decided that I didn't care about getting free Laffy Taffy, so we pushed our way through the persistent cloud of The Pot smoke, lectured some thugs on why it's not polite to scream "Fuck the Police" when seven cops go by on motorcycles, and eventually, after a lot of "Excuse Me!"s and "Pardons!"s and "Sorry I just banged you in the head with my shoulder,"s, I ended up just where you'd expect me to...
With my face in the ass of a toddler whose pants had come down while she was riding her father's shoulders.
Seriously.
So yeah... It was a long, hot day and it definitely didn't come out like I'd hoped it would...
But I can at least take pleasure knowing that sicko perv went home thinking the exact same thing.
