Monday, May 25, 2026, Memorial Day. It used to be a big day growing up. There was the Saddle Brook Memorial Day parade that I marched in once or twice with the Junior Rifle Squad. We trained and rehearsed for weeks beforehand, in the streets around the Saddle Brook American Legion on the Garfield border.
We had a uniform of a cowboy hat, a blue shirt with patches on it, epaulets, and thick navy blue trousers with a yellow gold stripe along the sides. And spats for our black shoes. It was a complete waste of time and only something that was done to make the parents and adults feel good.
People like me who were pacifists but didn’t know it, went along with it or else. We had dummy rifles that we would twirl and present arms as well as throwing them to other members of the Junior Rifle Squad in a hopefully precise drill. Sometimes we caught them, sometimes we didn’t.
Before I was a member of the Junior Rifle Squad I was one of the great unwashed kids who would pick up the empty rifle shells once they cooled off following a 21 gun salute at the top of the hill on Market Street where the Gulf Station used to be. I would collect them with the other children of alcoholic veterans once they cooled off and treated them like they were precious items, not realizing a day later they would be forgotten and more than likely thrown out.
As the hours went past, the adults got more and more tipsy and the kids would be more and more rambunctious. The parade was usually on a Sunday, allowing the Monday holiday to be a day to tend to their hangovers and for the kids to count the days until the end of school.
In the present day it’s been quite a humdrum weekend, filled with rain and yesterday filled with antagonism. Bill was around and that was great. Mike was supposed to come around Saturday but begged off due to the rain. And yesterday, which should have been the replacement day, was also filled with rain.
I went to the supermarket both days alone and while annoyed with Mike who wanted to spend time with Bill, I was a bit relieved. I had the awakening that I was glad things had cooled quite a bit between us. Gone are the sexual games, settling in on friendship, and I expressed that in a text to Mike while talking to him on another social media platform.
Unfortunately, the timing was off. I was in the midst of a good chat with Mike, who spied the other platform expressing my happiness of being friends rather than something else. It derailed the good chat we were having and turned into a spiral of hurt and confusion. We went to our respective corners.
I could not talk to Bill about the situation, and Mike could not talk to his beloved about it either. So we sat by ourselves licking our wounds. Bill and I watched the Martin Short documentary, which was sweet.
Mike more than likely chatted in direct messages to his hundreds of followers, telling them how he would like to be with them doing things that I used to hope we would do to each other. Don’t ask how I know, it was a bit underhanded on my part.
So much so that it takes willpower not to do it again, which would only upset me. Mike and I did have a good long talk before bedtime for Bonzo. Apologies were made and accepted. We are a family, Bill, Mike, Me and the beloved, Wade.
A chosen family that still has the hang ups of a flesh and blood family.
whachagonnado?
