Written on July 30th, 2008
When I was a child, I was in many parades. I marched in parades with my fellow girl scouts, gymnasts, and pom pom girls, at one time or another. Many of these parades were local parades in my home town or the surrounding suburbs but as a gymnast, we were in all of the downtown Chicago parades as well. I enjoyed these parades the best. We didn't march in those parades but instead did nonstop cartwheels, roundoffs, back handsprings, front handsprings, backovers, walkovers, flying somersaults etc. We were nonstop energy. Ah, the good old days. In one particular parade, I managed to get quite a bit of unwanted attention. We were showing off our gymnastics abilities as we were going over a bridge that was grated and somehow one of my fingers managed to get stuck in one of the smaller holes in the grate. My body was flipping and turning, my finger remained planted in that small hole on the bridge. I landed in a twisted heap on the ground, unharmed except for my ego and later an enormously swollen, sprained finger. My finger came right out once I came to that screeching halt. After that, I was relegated to the back of the pickup truck that preceded us, a place where the youngest gymnasts would rest when they became worn out from nonstop flipping and twisting. I recall feeling rather humiliated at the time but worse when I found out that my family witnessed the whole thing live and in color on the living room TV since the Chicago parades were televised.
