Tag: Child

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The Parade

I flattened the little kid. I walked into her full stride and knocked her to the pavement. As she lay there stunned, I bent down to help her up. All the while trapped inside my Pig-From-The-House-Of-Straw costume.

Some friends and I had signed up to be in the local town parade. We were assigned the “Three-little-pigs” and the “Big-bad-wolf” costumes. We got into the fluffy costumes, affixed the oversized heads, and took our assigned place in the parade line-up. Always a crowd-pleaser, we would chase each other around and make exaggerated huffing and puffing antics all along the parade route.

Wearing a giant pig costume is not as easy as it looks. For starters, the costume smelled AWFUL. You perspire like crazy in those things, as did the people who wore them before you. With the affixed head, there is very little air circulation. So basically you are walking a parade route in the sun in a fuzzy, sealed plastic bag full of sweat. Not pleasant.

Secondly, the parade route itself is not so straightforward. There was a marching band in front of us and a motorized float behind us (ironically, given that we were dressed as pigs, the float was promoting the local vegetarian club. True). We had to beware of all the stopping and starting lest we crash into the band or get run over ourselves by the float. And with many horses and carriages involved, lets just say there were a lot of “leavings” along the parade route. A lot.

Finally, the visibility out of the costume is near zero. We could only see through a screen in the pigs nostrils. We were constantly straining to see one another, keeping an eye out for leavings, the band, and the float. That’s where the kid comes in.

She probably loved the Three Little Pigs. Who can blame her? So she broke ranks from the roadside crowd and ran to give me a hug. With no peripheral vision, I never saw her coming. WHAMMO. Down she went with a pork knuckle to her chest.

Of course I was horrified. I bent over to help her up. She freaked out. Again, who could blame her? The giant pig that just flattened her was now towering above her, unable to communicate through a stupid costume that smelled of sweat and horse urine. From one nostril I could see the horrified mother. From the other, the father encouraging me to just move along. Which I did, in haste.

When I got home my father had taped the parade on our VCR. As fate would have it the incident occurred in front of the TV tower where they filmed the parade. The commentary went something like this:  “Well Ben, here come those rascally little pigs and the big bad wolf. Always a crowd fave… Good heavens…. Did that pig just….I believe it was the House of Straw…Oh dear… I hope she’s OK…

I hope so too.

 

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Special Christmas Advent Appeal – 4/12/2017

Africa: December, 2003.

They thought she was dead when they first found her, half-buried in the excrement at the bottom of the outhouse.  Certainly that had been the intent. Born unwanted in the night and lowered into the latrine by a desperate African mother, probably herself barely more than a child. She was a day old at most, lying silent in the filth, vermin crawling from her nose and ears.

But she was not dead. Someone fished her out, cleaned her up, and took her to The Babies Home.

Even the most seasoned hands at the orphanage were shocked by this little one’s circumstances. A staff member there remarked that the child was not alone in the tragic nature of her arrival. They noted that Christ himself had likewise been born into this world by way of a dung-heap, long ago arriving into the filth of a barn floor, care of an impoverished mother who was herself barely more than a child.

I found this statement to be cold comfort at the time. Its meaning has become more dear to me with each passing December. I think of that little girl as each Christmas approaches. I wonder what has become of her, and of the amazing things she may have done with the gift of her life.

Befitting the season, the orphanage named her Grace.

This true story is dedicated to BeadforLife. Founded in 2003, the year that Grace was born, BFL is the most effective organization I know of helping African women to permanently lift themselves and their families out of poverty – 46,000 individuals to date and counting. Please consider visiting the BeadforLife web site this holiday season and sharing this story with others. With our support, BeadforLife can help even more women like Grace and her mother to transform their lives, forever.