[A Timewarp Series]

Have you ever calculated the odds of somehow ending up in a parade that you were never invited to be in?

Sitting in your own, undecorated car, inadvertently driving at a snail’s pace, surrounded by proud pillars of the community and floats and other people who are actually supposed to be there? How you could just accidentally land yourself there, seeing the crowds composed of one-part confused, baffled faces, and one-part oblivious cheering?

I would introduce you to the method, but the truth is, it would never happen to a normal person. You would need to be hanging out with Michael LeBuhn, and more specifically it would be the combination of myself and Michael LeBuhn.

At the point of the parade incident, circa 2002, we hadn’t even hung out for a year. Nothing like this happened in the year we hadn’t hung out. Everything like this happens serendipitously when we end up together. No matter what we are doing, no matter what our actual plan is.

I don’t recall where we were headed. Regardless, the cosmic question existed: What did the universe have in store on this particular day?

“I don’t know. How about we randomly funnel these guys into a parade they didn’t even know existed?”

I’m sure we were bored. I don’t even think we were in the best of moods from the spirit of my recollection. I remember the road being blocked for some annoying reason and I just decided to head off whatever was quartering the street by pulling my forest green 1997 Nissan Pathfinder in through a bank parking lot and shooting through the teller line.

Then it happened. I drove out of the bank and pulled directly into the middle of an active parade. Just cut right in like I was supposed to be there. This happened to be my philosophy at the time, anyway. If no one says anything, then hey – you’re supposed to be there.  I could have put on a majorette cap and twirled my tire iron like a baton, and they would have just made me the grand marshal, no questions asked. Frank Abagnale here.

We couldn’t tell you what the parade was for, and I promise you, we most definitely didn’t care. Truthfully by that point I had no other option anyway. I was in a parade. That was my new reality. We rolled the windows down and cruised at the allotted three miles per hour down the arterial street, waiving at people. Tossing gum and click pens and whatever else I had in my personal vehicle out the windows for disappointed children to run over and pick up off the ground.