life:: i have succumbed to peer pressure

All my bad-assy friends are gun-toting maniacs.

I can now be counted among them.

All in the name of self-defense, I got my concealed carry permit.

Like.I.will.EVER.carry.

Yeah right, about that…

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like to shoot.  At a target.  In my backyard.  And only the circle targets, not those innocent animal kind, or the people silhouette ones either.  Maybe a soda can, or a bowling pin, or even the occasional metal sign, but not Bambi, or even a gopher target.  Ain’t happenin’.  I’m a lover not a fighter…just sayin’.

I have been telling the Frankster aw hell no for years.  I don’t need my own gun, let alone a cute little girly one that fits in my purse.  He begs to differ.

Peer pressure…1.  Me and my stubborn attitude…zero.

What does this all have to do with a parade you ask?  Well, pretty much nothing.  And everything.  But not in a grassy-knoll kind of way, just peer pressure.  Yeesh, I’m a little crazy, but not that kind of crazy.

Ya see in this little burg I live near, the entire town fills the streets for the high school homecoming parade.  I have never in my life witnessed such a thing.  Until I moved here, homecoming was just a football game, just a dance, just another high school rite of passage weekend.  Not here.  Oh.hell.no.  These homecoming hicks people start setting up chairs and food stands at o-dark-thirty on the town square for THE EVENT OF THE YEAR.

Businesses close down, there are beer gardens set up on nearly every corner, school is let out early for all grades.  When we moved here and my child was a mere kindergartener, I could only wonder why the hell were 5 year olds let out of school for the high school’s homecoming?

I get it now.  After the parade, while I am secluded safely away at my retreat in the country (home), they (the adults of this little burg),  will then commence the drinking of beer, the watching of football, and debauchery in the streets late into the night.  It’s like Podunk Mardi Gras.

I have always rebelled.  I’ve never worked on a float for 3 weeks in advance of the big day.  I’ve never volunteered to make costumes or loaned out my tractor.  I haven’t cooked until the wee hours the day before to set up a bake sale. Every year I have complained about needing to leave work early to pick up my child from school and grumbled profusely about these hicks trying to teach my baby to party like an over-grown teen at waaay too early of an age.  Bottom line, I have been a conscientious objector.

Let’s be honest, I was missing out.

Today was the annual pilgrimage for those homecoming hicks (as I so lovingly call them).

I now work in town, and in a building on the parade route.  They let us out of work early, and everyone was abuzz with parade chatter.  When in Rome…

 I went to the parade.  And I liked it.  There, I said it out loud.  I was wrong, and I liked it.

I saw several of my bad-assy friends, I laughed, I had street meat.  I might add that I also left after the 1st hour of the parade.  Yes, it lasts for over 2 hours.  I have my limits people.

So I have now succumbed to peer pressure on 2 counts.

Now I just need to find the secret to making peer pressure work for me.  Come on, everybody’s doing it…be a hooker for me, please?  I keep telling my guys they need to learn how to crochet.  That way when I get tired of a project or it’s going too slow, I can con them into taking up a hook and getting to work.  That would come in really handy about now because I only have 7 (!) days left till my craft show.

Yeah right, about that…not gonna happen.