Apparently, being in a parade is all about placement.

The Tayloe group last year.

“We’re in the back and–oh!–in front of a band,” Carol Tayloe of Tayloe Associates said when she found out where her group would be during this year’s Grand Illumination Parade. “That’s a good thing.”

Last year Tayloe and her court reporting crew won the award for most enthusiastic volunteers, but it won’t be as easy this time around. See last year they were holding the King Neptune balloon and Tayloe had the advantage of two beautiful daughters dressed like mermaids handing out candy. This time around Tayloe has to make due with Jerold the Bookworm.

“We have some ideas,” she told me with a wink.

On Monday I met with Tayloe at the meeting for all the volunteers that will make this year’s parade happen. Tayloe has been nice enough to let me hold one of the Bookworm ropes and to be a part of her team.

Cathy Coleman, President of the Downtown Norfolk Council, led off the meeting.

“I think this is going to be the prettiest, if not the most exciting, parade in our history,” she said.

From then on Coleman veered between sounding like a city official and a party planner. She warned groups to work together and to not stop to show off. “It’s like a bunch of drunk sailors got together,” she said of a previous year’s group.

“It’s all about production. It’s all about theater. It’s all about the silver hats,” she said. It’s the parade’s 25th year, making it the silver anniversary. The theme is silver.

Tayloe leaned in toward me. “How can we incorporate silver?” she wondered out loud.

Coleman informed the group that the parade would go on no matter the weather.

“In 24 years we’ve never had rain on our parade,” she said.

“She has to say that,” somebody in the audience joked.

“Oh,” Coleman said, remembering something. “No Santas. One year we had six Santas show up and then we had a bunch of mothers calling us saying, ‘How dare you.’ We have one Santa in our parade and it’s the real one. Most Santas are alcoholics. Ours is not.”

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Snoopy. (Photo: http://www.dresramblings.com/)

Parades have a way of bringing communities together. About 100,000 people are expected to line the 2-mile parade route this year. (It goes, more or less, from Waterside and then down the length of Granby.) There are somewhere between 350 and 400 volunteers involved to make it happen. This is not a money-maker for the city or the DNC. It is a community builder. It is a spirit builder. And if some people should patronize the businesses along around the parade route, well that’s good too.

“It’s like a mini Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade,” said Tayloe, who is clearly delighted by all things parade.

The Macy’s Day Parade is why I wanted to get involved with the Illumination Parade. As a kid I was glued to the television, waiting for the old people to stop talking so that we could get to the good stuff: the balloons. My favorites were Snoopy and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. This was back when I still believed that my stuffed animals came alive at night, so seeing those giant balloons float through Manhattan gave me visions and dreams that could have filled a bookshelf of Maurice Sendak and Shel Silverstein stories.

Parades can be kind of magic. Come Illumination Parade day, when I get to hold onto one of Jerold the Bookworm’s ropes, it will be like holding onto a childhood fantasy. There will be part of me that wishes Carol and the rest would let their ropes go, leaving me the only one holding on, and Jerold and I could float off into the sky and then past space to a land where, well, anything can happen.

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But of course parades can’t be all fun. The 2009 Balloon Participant Instruction packet warns us in all-caps that, YOUR MOST IMPORTANT JOB (BESIDES ENTERTAINING THE CROWD) IS TO HELP US AVOID GAPS. There should be two car lengths between each group, and never should a group stop.

“Please, no stopping to perform in front of the cameras,” warned Greg Brauer, production manager at WVEC, which is airing the parade. “It’s as sure a bet as any we’ll break at that time.”

Brauer also warned the group that college football could push the airing of the parade, but we shouldn’t worry about the cameras catching… err… anything we’d rather it not.

“There will be no crotch shots,” he said.

Near the end of the meeting warm oatmeal raisin cookies were served. There was a tangible buzz in the room as we all seemed to realize how close this parade is to happening, and that we’ll all get to play a part in it. For Tayloe, the four-figure price to rent the balloon seemed like a small price to pay for the joy the parade brings her.

“We get our name out there,” she said, clearly rationalizing. But she didn’t want to talk about that kind of stuff. There were much more important topics to discuss, such as how to incorporate some silver into our costumes to help defend her title.

The Grand Illumination Parade takes place on Saturday, Nov. 21, at 7 pm. Click here for more information on routes and other such details.