Parade Parade

Welcome to the Parade! The Parade Parade, in fact.

Saturday was the Parade Parade -- the Rededication of New London's Historic Parade Plaza -- after a $10 million retrofit. It's been redesigned and reconfigured and reconstituted and lots of New Londoners headed downtown for a fabulous time.

Happily, we ran into our little friends down at the new Parade . . .

. . . which was, as always, a huge treat.

It was a hot summer sultry day, and there were episodes of quietness down there in the early afternoon. Jennie and I blamed it on lack of street food.

We had plenty of live entertainment, though . . .

. . . and plenty of lively conversation with Hans and Heidi and the kids . . .

. . . and we got talking, as one often does, about a wiggly tooth and a tooth fully grown in behind said wiggly tooth . . .

"Get over here," I said to my young friend. "Let me get that thing out of your head for you."

He thought it was kind of fun at first . . .

. . . but then I started pulling hard . . .

. . . and then I drew blood, and well, then it wasn't fun anymore -- well, at least not for him. Just look at his face. Youch! Mistah was absolutely chagrined. "Oh, come on," I said. "Parents can't hurt their kids; that's what friends and neighbors are for! Why do you think my parents sent us next door to Mrs. Cronin every time we needed a tooth pulled out of our heads? She'd yank it right out and send us home. Done."

I emailed Heidi the next day, asking if her boy had forgiven me yet. She reported, "He was over it as soon as we went around the corner. In fact he was bragging about it for the rest of the day "My friend the neighbor Ellie tried to pull my tooth out!"

"My friend the neighbor Ellie". I like that.

Anyway, after my failed attempt at dentistry, we sought other adventures in the city. I found a newly-painted-over graffiti wall (which, incidentally, had been sanctioned graffiti) . . .

. . . which wasn't quite fully painted over. Kimmie and I are both very ghetto.

The mayor got up in a cherry picker to cut the ribbon . . .

. . . which he had to cut with his own regular pedestrian scissors . . .

. . . and the festivities began. Flag twirlers . . .

. . . Firefighter bagpipers . . .

. . . the rededication of the 1896 Soldiers and Sailors monument, with an, um, unique view of our ol' friend the sailor here . . .

. . . men in stripes . . .

. . . my girl Jennie . . .

. . . with her man Paulie B . . .

. . . Dawnie taking photos . . .

. . . actually, lots of peeps taking photos . . .

. . . I love photos of peeps taking photos.

Johnny Slips was in the house . . .

. . . as was this guy. Blumy. Dick Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General, who's running for Chris Dodd's U.S. Senate seat. You may have heard he's had some, um, issues lately.

Johnny Slips said nary a word to ol' Blumy about Viet Nam, though. All Slips told him was he ran into Blumy in a mens room -- no! not like that! -- a few years ago and Blumy actually said to Slips, "I thought you looked familiar."

All I know is this: 1. Blumy wears his watch outside his shirtsleeve cuff. Is that a new trend? And 2. I'm clutching my happy bucket of love in my right hand. That's an old trend.

But then the best thing of all happened . . .

All of a sudden everybody around me was dancing to a number. *I* wanted to dance to the number. I just did not know the number.

It was a wicked cool community dance urban number thing. I loved it. I'm going to be in the next one. If I'm chosen.

Mostly, though, the day was about admiring the awesome new Parade.

A cool new downtown centerpiece in an ever cool city.