Nobody’s Allowed to Just Watch

“Is that a marching band?  Do you hear that?”  Laurelyn looked out our 9th floor window of our hotel room.  “Oh my goodness!  It’s a parade!  Get your shoes on.  We’re going to a parade.”

I was catching a mid-afternoon snooze, actually, and I woke to the click of the hotel door closing.

I sat up groggily, leaning back on my elbows to survey the situation. My half-awake self realized the room was empty of my friends, and then I pieced together the conversation I thought had been a dream.

Oh! They went to see a parade?  I can’t miss this!

I threw on a pair of shoes and raced out the door, eager to catch up.  I followed the sound of the bass drums until I found my girls a couple of blocks down the street.  Sure enough, a parade, right through the city streets of Portland.

“Trish!  You know what Donald Miller and Bob Goff say: nobody’s allowed to watch!  Get in there!  Get in the parade!”

So I jumped in.  I danced and clapped.  There’s this bit of me that loves to join a loud, silly scene, and I’m beginning to find her again.  So I joined the parade.

And that’s when I realized I’d never quite seen a parade like this one.  What I thought was a marching band was actually a small tribe of people carrying drums and dancing in a circle.  People were chanting and carrying placards.  There was a long line of policemen on bicycles, all equipped with riot gear.

I wasn’t dancing in a parade.  I had joined a protest.

Would you look at this picture?  Tarbled hair, wrinkled clothes, and one leg of my jeans tucked into my boots.  I tumbled out of bed to march in a protest.

And I never even learned the cause.

But I did learn on the Portland News that there were some arrests and pepper spray a few blocks down.  So, you know.

Guess I can cross that off my bucket list.

One man’s protest is another woman’s parade.

Tricia Lott Williford

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  1. Oh my gosh. That is great. I love the look on your face. “Um, where am I? What did I just step into? Uh, guys, a little help here? Oh well, this is fun.”

  2. Laughed out Loud!!!

  3. Define tarble, I asked Google, and it simply *couldn’t* And yet we all know what you are talking about. I love this post. I love the comments it illicits. I love that we get to mentally decide if we’d roll over or run after the girls in pursuit of a parade. I’m hoping the memory of it will spur a bunch of choices we’ll want to write about later, too. Thanks for sharing!

  4. That made me literally LOL. 🙂

  5. This could be read as a cautionary tale by someone like me who takes caution to the extreme. But…somehow it makes me want to fling myself into life instead. Even if I sometimes wind up where I didn’t expect to be.
    Such a fun story! And I love the picture. And I love that you would tumble out of bed because I probably wouldn’t for anything short of a fire alarm. I want to be more like you.

  6. This was just too awesome :-). “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!!” was all I could think as I read the end of this post. That, and did you ever find out what you were protesting?!

  7. Rolling on Floor Laughing! That’s hysterical!

  8. “Tarbled.” Excellent!

  9. Love it!

  10. Excuse me while I laugh very loudly. Good story. Also you look good in that picture. Are those skinny jeans? Girl.

    • You can laugh, Jaimie. 🙂 And thank you – they’re Lucky jeans: Zoe Cut. 🙂

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