Reserving Space

In A Better World

To the Editor:

Let’s address this for a second.

My mom and I went out to Starbucks this afternoon for a coffee and some mother-daughter chat, fleeing the proximity of our house. To get to Starbucks, we had to drive through the center of my town. As we pulled off Route 302, I noticed plastic lawn chairs lined up and down Main Street.

Don’t worry, Newtown residents were not taking time to enjoy the beauty of our small, lovely town on a Saturday afternoon, however; they were preparing for the Labor Day Parade.

Which happens to be about 48 hours away. Which means that people in my town are preparing for the Labor Day Parade two days in advance.

Not only that, but lining the chairs was caution tape (yes, the caution tape that can otherwise be found around crime scenes, usually involving murder, robbery, etc).

Observing my town two days before the annual Labor Day Parade, my mind began to go nuts, being that there are so many things to consider in regard to the plastic lawn chair, caution tape, parade awaiting streets of Newtown.

I could look down on the situation, conforming into the “conservative town deviant” (a.k.a. philosophically rebellious teenager) that I sometimes find myself becoming. I could tell my town to get a life, to maybe explore some other things to be preparing for 48 hours in advance.

Or I could count my blessings. How lucky I am to live in a place where caution tape is not used to isolate crime scenes, but to reserve lawn chairs for the Labor Day Parade. I could realize how ridiculous I sound when I talk about having to escape from my two-story home, because I just need to buy myself a coffee, and ridicule my town’s residents for leaving lawn chairs outside for a few days. Which by the way, the chairs will remain in their exact spots until the parade, because there is definitely a zero percent chance that they will get stolen.

I think the important thing to do here is to combine a few views of Main Street at 48 hours before the Labor Day parade. Yes, I think it’s fair to say that such planning and precautionary elements are a little extreme, but I have to wonder what would happen if more people in places like Newtown took their passions about getting a prime parade seat and channeled them into other things. World peace, perhaps?

Who knows? The world might be a better place.

Sincerely,

Megan Preis

High School Senior

49 Flat Swamp Road, Newtown                            September 6, 2010