When I was a junior in high school, I was captain of the dance team. The “governing” body of high school dance teams is called the Universal Dance Association (UDA) and every year they send a block of dancers to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In November 2006, I was one of the dancers who went.
I went to New York with three other girls from my team. Before I left for New York, they sent me a package that included my costume, a huge puffy red “Parade Participant” jacket that I was legally required to wear every time I left the hotel, and a DVD (lol!) with a welcome message and a recording of the routine that I needed to learn before the big day.
We were in New York for a full week, arriving the Sunday before Thanksgiving and flying home the Saturday afterwards. We stayed at some big fancy hotel with one of those big fancy lobbies that you want to walk in and spin around, absorbing it in slow motion before one of your friends yells, “Come ON!” and pulls you out of your reverie, like a girl in a movie about New York City.
This wasn’t my first time in the city; I had been two years earlier for a wedding (which I obviously told everyone about in the most insufferable way). Every day we had rehearsals, and sometimes we had two. In between rehearsals we were taken on a full tour of the city. We went to the top of the Empire State Building and we went to Ground Zero. We saw Tarzan on Broadway, we took one of those bus sightseeing tours, went to Times Square, and we got to go to Macy’s for Christmas shopping (obviously). One day they just dropped us off in Chinatown for a few hours and my friend and I were looking at knock-off designer purses in a storefront when an old woman said “Come with me” and for some reason we did (???) and we followed her up two flights of stairs and into an apartment and then into a walk-in closet filled with factory rejects of designer purses. I bought a Kate Spade bag that had the inside label sewn on crooked and a Coach bag that had an extra panel of liner fabric. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of!!!!
We had a tech rehearsal on Tuesday night, where we actually went to that iconic green square that’s painted on the road in front of Macy’s (yep, you heard it here folks! It’s not a stage, it’s painted right on the street!) and they had all these bright TV lights and cameras and men yelling into headsets. We had 15 minutes to go through and block our routine and then run it with music as many times as we could before going home.
The day of the parade, we all had to be on the steps of the Natural History Museum by like 5:00 a.m., which meant that a swarm of high school girls all got on the subway in the wee morning hours. I will never forget the single old man sitting in an otherwise empty subway car reading the paper, looking up and seeing hundreds of us on the platform all wearing our costumes, tucking his paper under his arm, and exiting as we all piled in. He then stood on the platform to wait for the next train and waved to us as we pulled out of the station.
Thanksgiving 2006 was rainy and cold. We all had ponchos and those little hand warmer packets in our shoes and gloves. We had to sit on the steps of the Museum and wait until we were called to “join” the parade. It was miserable, but we did get to see each float roll by us as it joined, which was very cool. The only celebrities that I remember seeing were Gloria Estefan and Corbin Bleu. I only remember Corbin Bleu because I also saw him the following year in a holiday parade in Chicago and was like, “Huh...another Corbin Bleu holiday parade.”
When we were called to join the parade, we jumped up and cheered. We walked along the route, clapping our hands and going through our cheers and arm movements, shaking with cold and excitement. The best part of the parade was walking through Columbus Circle, where you could really feel the energy of the crowd and could see people in the windows of every building looking out onto the route. As we got closer to Macy’s, we had to get rid of our ponchos, but we couldn’t stop walking or break our formation. So we all had to tear off our ponchos, ball them up, weigh them down with our hand warmers, and throw them to the sidelines where all the chaperones scooped them up into big piles on the side of the street.
Then it was showtime. We arrived on that green square, lights glaring, and the music began. It was all over within two minutes, and we kept walking, then headed back to the hotel. After a shower and a change of clothes, it was only noon and we were done for the day. My friends and I ate our Thanksgiving dinner at McDonald’s and saw Rent on Broadway for $40 because it was a holiday and we got a discount as parade participants — wearing those big red coats had an advantage.
To this day, this is still my favorite Thanksgiving.
Obviously all of our parents recorded the performance, and when I sat down to watch it I saw that the first HALF of our performance was cut because a commercial for the National Dog Show had run long. (Because of this I still do not watch this dog show!) I watched our performance on repeat until I could find each of us in the sea of dancers, pausing and cheering at our blurry faces on national television.
And that’s showbiz, baby!
In honor of the holiday there won’t be a Friday conversation this week. Enjoy your Thanksgiving in whatever form it takes this year, and Gold-Plated Girls will be back next week.