How the other half lives

A very nice family from Gianni's class invited us to ride along in their truck for the Boulder Holiday Parade. We were going to head into Denver for their holiday parade, but how can I deprive my children of the opportunity to ride in a parade? So we stayed local to wave and throw lollipops at people.

I've been feeling a little melancholy in the past week. As much as I love Boulder, it's hard to spend the holiday season in a place where you're new. People are going to parties and seeing friends and loved ones, and you're, well, not. In fact, in my case, you feel like you're traveling in a closed tube between work and home, between software white papers and potty training. It can get you down. So I looked forward to having a holiday-related social outing.

And it starts out fun as promised. We ride downtown in the back of a construction truck filled with hay bales and two other families. Gianni is in heaven. Tea is being a pill, but what else is new. All is hunky-dory until we get to the staging area. It turns out that the Barack Obama contingency is riding behind us in the lineup.

John, our host, turns to everyone and says, "Uh-oh, we've got Democrats behind us," and the rest of the group says, "Oh no!"

Oh no?! OH NO??? Great. Our one holiday outing of the season, with people who seem like they could be friends, and it turns out they're the only four Republicans in Boulder. How did this HAPPEN? How could Rick spend every morning this semester talking to this guy at drop off and not realize that he was the big R? And I know he didn't, because this is my husband who has been known to say, "if I found out someone I knew voted Republican, I would shun them." (He has a flair for the dramatic.)

This is a genuine social conundrum for us. Keep in mind that we are coming from a place where, if we were riding in the back of a truck full of hay, and I said, for example, "Dick Cheney sucks cocks in hell," 99.99 percent of the other passengers would agree with me. Hell, in Boulder, you'd think that at least 97.9 passengers would agree. How in god's name did we end up riding with the other 2.1 percent??? What to do? Should we just smile and throw suckers at people? Or should we jump ship and hope that the Obama float will take us in?

I spent the first 15 minutes of the night worried that I would get stuck debating health care, and the next 15 minutes terrified that someone would bring up the R-word and Gianni would blurt out, "But Dad, you said all Republicans were EVIL!" But it all turned out fine. We had a great time, went out for pizza afterwards, talked about all of the things we had in common, and avoided the subject of 2008 entirely. It was a fine, non-partisan time for all.

We learned a valuable lesson last night. Republicans are people too. But I'm still glad we snuck that Obama sign onto the back of their truck before we left.