When Tiny Towns Parade…

There is an age at which reverse psychology ceases to have any effect on a child. That age is not 3, as is evidenced by the following two photos. In this first one, my SnuggleMonkey made the face she wanted to.

For the second photo, I stood behind camera and used a very dorky tone and said, “Do not smile at me. No. Don’t. Whatever you do, do NOT smile for the camera.” And the result was the following:

So I took a short break to praise her and snarfle her sweaty little neck (she DOES sweat a LOT for a tiny girl…). And then I moved on to another child of mine. And while 3 is not the age of failed reverse psychology, and 5 is also not the age, I believe that 7 is that age. I turned the camera on Mama’s Boy and said, “Boy, don’t smile normal. Do NOT smile normal for me.” And I got this.

The usual. Sigh.

SnuggleMonkey tried to wrestle him over that.

I turned to a few more normal people to see what I could get. Don’t you know George and Martha would be proud of the USA headgear that has come out now?

Well, those went pretty well, so I’ll go back to my own kids again and see what I can shoot.

Yeah, no. That’s just a little bit severe. Well, I’ll isolate the almost 5-year-old and try that.

Nope.  Back to Mama’s Boy. Looking for ONE.GOOD.SHOT.

I hope that wasn’t a real attempt.

Stop it, boy, or I will go get the milk of magnesia out of the car.

Brother.

About this time, the parade started. It was 900 degrees and sunny. I was sweating like an Olympic wrestler. Every year the kids sit on the curb with their bags for the candy. And each year the candy gets more and more sparse with the “floats” becoming more like Jeb and Daisy just driving their leased Dodge Ram slowly through the parade route.

The above photo is a typical scene from our small-town parade. There are no vehicles in the picture. There are no kids looking, because there is simply nothing to look at. And my Beloved is staring with disgust into her empty candy bag.

Ah, the faces of childhood joy. Positively giddy, they are. Way up at the top of this photo, you can see a golf cart. That was cool. Still no candy. Or anything, really.

A few things started happening, so they stood up. They were poised and ready. For something.

You might notice in the above photo that my daughter is waving to a generic brown truck. Nothing decorated about it and no candy to be seen. SnuggleMonkey appears to be crying, which happened on occasion that day. Her sweet sister gave her more than  half of her own candy, which I loved watching. Even if she only got one piece thrown to her, she’d drop it in her sister’s bag.

And while the parade seems to be declining in quality a great deal, the fireworks on the golf course are not.

They put on an awesome show for a dinky little town. The only drawback I could see was having to answer ‘no’ to the question “was that the grand finale?” more than 67 times in the 30 minute show. I’m not sure I ever got to answer yes to that question, because when the grand finale actually lit up the sky, they didn’t ask.

This is a final shot of the non-camp-attending cousins. I did not dress SnuggleMonkey in a bathing suit like a mother who doesn’t care at ALL. She wet herself. And THAT was the grand finale.

P.S. We do not actually keep Milk of Magnesia in the car. Nobody does that. Nobody.