The BiAnnual Behavior Modification Experiment (As Yet Unsuccessful)

Some of you have no doubt heard me talk about the Sharks Booster Club, of which, by the way I was BOOSTER OF THE YEAR last year yeah that's right bitches BOOSTER OF THE YEAR next stop Empress of the Universe, anyway one of the ways I won BOOSTER OF THE YEAR was by organizing people from both the Sharks and the Booster Club to march in the St. Patrick's Day and Columbus Day Parades. This is always a fun exercise in crowd control, because frankly it's a perfect storm of Kids Who Sit In the Back of Class and "Crack Wise" to the Dismay of Teachers Everywhere.

Since our little gang, i.e. the people in our row and other people not smart enough to run when we came near them with the demonic Booster Club Recruitment glint in our eyes, got involved with this stuff, the last hope of good behavior was lost. The Sharks office is a fun one, lots of young folks, and no one is "old at heart," so when you have a slightly odd event like a parade where you're sort of having a mobile hang-out session, eventually some degree of goofiness will emerge. Combine this with a group of Boosters who primarily make their presence in the DCU Center known by bellowing such delicate sentiments as "Hey 29, does your husband fight?" and taunting both opposing and home players, and it turns into sort of a cheerful kind of mayhem. It is a total effing blast, is my point. Let me explain why this year rocked by explaining last year's routine.

First of all, last year, the Sharks had been in town for about three minutes, and more importantly, the team/Booster relationship was still in the feeling-out stage. So, we told the Sharks we'd get everything set up, and decided to get some convertibles and a float to really introduce the new team with a bang. This involved borrowing two Mustang convertibles and a flatbed truck from Super Awesome Friend of a Booster, Rick Place of Putnam Ford Mercury in Putnam, CT where everyone should go RIGHT NOW to buy multiple vehicles, since Rick is an awesome dude who entrusted a bunch of nutbars with vehicles he presumably wants to sell some day. Thank you, Rick! After picking up said vehicles from said awesome dude, Speed and I split off, he to take one of the convertibles to our house and me to go to a farm that should be seriously considered for the next inevitable remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre to pick up some bales of hay. Needless to say, I also eventually needed gas, which when you are driving a diesel vehicle is easier said than done. We then proceeded to wrestle the giant and obstinate metal plates off of the sides of the truck and slap together some wooden railings to keep the wee little children from toppling off mid-parade. The next day, Speed and I showed up at the parade staging area at the ass crack of dawn and waited for everyone else to arrive.

Aaaaand arrive they did, including one person who was SHITTY drunk at ten in the effing morning. How? We went over the ground rules, which basically are as follows:

1. Don't act like a moron.
2. Don't throw candy.

(You can insert your own rant about how the litigiousness of this society has taken all the fun out of life, particularly vis a vis classic child-style fun like having candy hurled at you by strangers on a prade route. All I'm saying is that when I have my own kids I am throwing candy at them all the time so they TOUGHEN UP. I'm undecided on whether I want to force them to climb trees and skin their knees, etc.) So of course what everyone did was to throw candy at people, because between poor listening skills, poor retention skills, and general rebelliousness (and in that one notable case, drunkenness) , it was a battle lost before war was even declared. The highlight was when we passed the poor local TV stand, who of course the Sharks players WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS BUT STILL GUILTY began whipping candy up at. Good times.

This year was relatively less hectic - no float, one convertible, one pickup truck, and the Sharks' big box truck - but we continued what we have now accepted as a traditon of the Worcester Sharks being the problem children of the Worcester Parades. Speed and I just watched the coverage of the parade on the local On Demand service and this is how it went. Important note: there were two Channel 3 reporters, an older dude and a younger chick who is INADEQUATE as a replacement for Julie Tremmel who I enjoyed very much. Said younger chick spent most of the parade yelling assorted stuff at people in the parade and not talking into the microphone. I like to imagine that the older dude was trying to kill her with mind bullets, but I admit that some of my hostility is derived from the Julie Issue. So here's how it went.

1. The Sharks appear on the video, but the announcer is still TALKING to people on the route and not paying attention. Luckily for all involved, she did establish that she was a part of the Cantiani (Grand Marshal) club. NOTHING LIKE STUPID INSIDE JOKES TO SPICE UP A BROADCAST!!! She then starts talking about the Tornadoes, who went past while she was howling at Cantiani.

2. The male announcer calls the Tornadoes the local professional basketball team. The Tornadoes play baseball.

3. The Sharks gang looks pretty good, nice and festive in teal. My mother is idly waving a Sharks flag and sort of looks like she roamed onto the parade route because she got bored of watching. My father was probably a.) giving Speed "helpful" "directions" like "okay, you're going to go straight here," or b.) doing what he naturally called "in flight refueling," which is DadSpeak for stealing people's candy buckets and bringing them back to me (I was riding in the back of the truck) to get refilled.

4. The announcer says October is Sharktober about fourteen times, and around the eighth time, Raspy from our row appears in the bottom of the screen making the face of a recently escaped mental patient. Yes, he was the only person to do this during the entire broadcast.

5. For no reason whatsoever, the Sharks dude driving the box truck stops the truck in the middle of the street, GETS OUT OF THE TRUCK, and runs over to the side of the route to talk to someone, presumably about the solution to world hunger.

6. Suddenly, the female announcer says, "oh, they're going to throw a DumDum at us!"

7. The sounds of assault are heard, then the announcer yells "stick with hockey!" several times, with an inaudible response from the guys in the Sharks contingent.

8. The end of the Sharks group disappears as the announcer declares that "the Sharks rock."

Ah, hockey season.