How do you make 37 NYPD smile?

So imagine me in my tree grazing costume, sandwiched between a hula troupe and a float of drag queens…it seemed only fitting that I would be in that mix. In the parade of life I would say I would probably be in the same exact spot. To summarize I would say that it is a Pride parade with the Grim Reaper…and so much more. I never really felt the mind numbing flash of the media until last night. My favorite comment was from a man who was thrilled that I decided to put the giraffe in a sweater. The combination seemed to thrill him to tears. You just never know what is going to happen. It was definitely a free for all at times with people pushing, grabbing and generally anxious prior to being let loose in measured doses into 6th street in New York. I was particularly impressed by the NYPD, for they sort of became my parade. I spent a fair amount of time trying to avoid falling into an officer, and spent an equal amount of time trying to make a few of them smile. Neither was easy, mind you as I was in a very chaotic section of the parade, as I later learned. It seems that there were sections that were exciting but not necessarily chaos. I was under the impression that the entire parade was careening out of control, but nope only a few sections including mine. But chaos seems to be my destiny, so onward I went, out of the main drag and tried to zigzag back and forth to the people. I mean people! Thousands and thousands everywhere you looked. People were at times twenty people deep, trying to catch a glance. I lumbered and even danced to the circuit boy club music, performed a modified hula, and was the official pet of the “massage parlor” girls. It was my own coming of age story with all of the characters marching along, but in an Anthony Hopkins direction style ie. Slipstream.

It was something memorable and definitely something to talk about next time I am around a campfire with a few tourists in the South Seas. I am glad I had the motivation to due it. It is amazing too, that you end up running into some of the same people that you saw earlier in the day. The Ghost Buster boys who I had spent the morning with on the Today Show, spotting me in the chaos, thanks to my height. Another woman recognized me from my parade of one down 5th ave, after Rockefeller Plaza. She grabbed my sleeve excitedly as if we were old friends. Costumes and parades are great like that, they seem to lessen the gap between us.

All in all, my very favorite moment of the day was spent trailing two zoo keepers strolling on their lunch break outside the Central Park Zoo. An elderly pedestrian approached us and informed them that they were being followed by a giraffe. Needless to say they laughed and gave that "everybody is a clown" look before turning to see that is was true. "Only in New York" I heard throughout the day and night, and it seems to be quite true.