Sarah shook with both hands, causing me to flail wildly awake, pillow flying out from between my legs, cold sweat bursting from my forehead, and a girlish shriek escaping my mouth. She giggled like a son of a bitch as I quickly attempted to compose myself.
“What? What is it?” I glanced behind me at the clock. 5:45 in the a.m. “My God, what the hell are we doing up this early?” Sarah hopped up and down, grinning with such violence that her teeth appeared to be making a jailbreak from her gums. “What is this, Christmas morning?! Good God, Boots!”
“It’s Parade Day!” she shouted, and jumped on the bed like we were The Jeffersons. In all her bouncing, she knocked her head against the drop ceiling, causing a haze of debris and dust to dislodge and waft down onto my face, with no little sneezing and wheezing to follow.
I, not being an early riser, was none too excited, while the girlfriend’s head would have exploded off her body had it not been so carefully attached at the neck. Since we’d been together, Parade Day had become for her something akin to a birthday rolled into New Year’s with a heaping mound of Christmas thrown on top. She looked forward to it months in advance, which I found somewhat remarkable as she is not a total alcoholic, or, as far as I could remember, Irish.
The Parade in question is the only one that matters in Scranton, PA – The St. Patrick’s Day Parade, albeit never held on St. Patrick’s Day itself. This is in deference to the granddaddy of all St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York City, which is on March 17th no matter the day of the week. Scranton unleashes its festivities on the Saturday before, even if the 17th happens to land on a Saturday. There are other parades in Scranton, I’m sure (though none come immediately to mind), but nothing compares to the unbridled, psychotic brouhaha that occurs at the tail end of each winter.
Sarah bolted out of the bedroom, hollering fittingly like a banshee and dove headlong into the pile of girlfriends that slept over, all eagerly awaiting the prospect of getting drunk in the morning at a bar with shamrocks on every visible surface.
The difference between myself and the girlfriend’s entourage was that I actually grew up in Scranton, and remember seeing the parade sober (as a child, mind you). Scranton isn’t much of a party town, and doesn’t tend to get roused up for many events. There’s a First Night New Year’s celebration, instituted in 1999, which seemed great at first and got lamer and lamer as the years wore on. There’s the Italian Festival, a lavish feast lasting for three whole days in September that wreaks havoc on my poor digestive system. And there’s…oh, sorry, right, that’s all. Three times a year people converge on the downtown area, two of them center on drinking more so than eating, but only one goes from dawn to the following dawn. Parade Day, Scranton’s own holiday.
So far this Parade Day was similar to any other I’ve spent with the girlfriend, so one may wonder what was worth noting this time around. I was slow to get up, the girls were cracking open Keystone Lights before showering, and the morning routine of my guinea pig Snickers (consisting largely of tai chi and quiet prayer) was greatly disrupted. All pretty straightforward. However, this Parade Day would ultimately become anything but conventional.
To preview, our group will get separated for large parts of the day, someone will get stabbed with a fork, someone else will throw up in the Mall at Steamtown, one individual will end up at the bottom of Lake Scranton, some members of our much larger party will be arrested (which, on Parade Day, takes some doing), a number of prominent locales in the city will get damaged beyond repair, and no one will at any time consider going to Wilkes Barre’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. Because it sucks. Parade and town.
The possibilities are endless! Where will the story go from here? Who will they run into along the way? And will Snickers take legal action against the author for being so wildly misrepresented (he studies taekwondo)? Find out in the next installment of the already regrettable account of Scranton and Parade Day, likely entitled A Lager! My Kingdom for a Lager!
