Mardi Gras Memory #1

In honor of the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras, I thought I'd dig up some of my most vivid Mardi Gras memories.

To be fair, the good ones are few and far between, as I was never a huge fan. Maybe as a kid. But eventually I grew tired of the large crowds of drunk people ... the willingness to trample over a small child to get one worthless dubloon ... the obnoxious frat boy behavior ... I could go on.

But I won't, because darn if this whole Katrina thing doesn't actually make me a bit nostalgic for maybe just one parade.

So. OK. Mardi Gras, high school. I'm maybe 15 or so. My friend Laurie's mom decides we're going to one of the big parades (don't remember which one - but it was a big one. Endymion? Bacchus? Something like that.) She takes a bunch of us kids downtown, and our first stop is this bar. I don't remember anything specific about it - like, I don't know, why we were there, why she felt the need to stop there - maybe a bathroom? All I remember was the fact that we were teenagers, we were in a bar, taken there by a responsible adult, and no one in the bar seemed to care. That, my friends, was cool.

We then head down to the parade route. For those of you not familar with such things, trying to get to one of the big parades downtown is often an exercise in futility. It's crowded, it can be dangerous, and most importantly, the crowds surrounding the parade can be 10 deep so that you, the 5'2" girl, won't see any of the marching bands and maybe only the top fourth of the floats. Wheeeeee. That's excitement.

After standing around in this crowd for a bit, Miss Laurie (yes, Laurie's mom was also Laurie) decides that this isn't working. I should mention that Miss Laurie is a little Spanish spitfire, and has this way of doing what she wants when she wants and will often just keep talking until she gets what she wants. She spies a barracaded-in area with a very small number of people inside ... with plenty of room to move about in safety and see the entire parade unobscured. She moves a barracade and has us all move inside.

This area, you see, is for friends and family of the NOPD. Naturally, within minutes, a cop approaches and asks who let us in. "Oh," she says, "We're friends of Vic Manale." "Huh," he says, "I don't believe Vic's working tonight." We, the kids, are sort of fascinated by an adult's outright lie like this - because you see, not only did Vic not authorize this particular action, Miss Laurie had recently had a major falling out with him and they hadn't spoken - at least, not civilly - since.**

And yet - the Spanish spitfire did her thing, and somehow sweetalked them into letting us stay. It was the best view of a Mardi Gras parade ever ... I could see the whole thing, front row, up close and personal. Of course, if I look on this as a morality tale, then I certainly didn't learn any of the right things. But man, it was a good time.

** You may notice I refer to "Vic" and "Miss Laurie". Vic was my friend Scott's stepdad, who I hardly knew. Scott was one of my best friends, but I spent precious little time with his parents. Plus, as his stepdad, Scott himself always just referred to him as "Vic". That's how he remains in all of my memories. OTOH, Miss Laurie was a huge part of my life. Thus the distinction.