If you ever wondered what a shorter, nerdier, and flamboyant Abraham Lincoln would have looked like, it was me on Saturday night.

Jesse in person.

I brought the black suit and beard I haven’t cut for weeks and weeks. Carol Tayloe, my balloon boss for the night, provided the glittery gold top hat, silver sequined gloves, geeky glassless glasses, and the polka-dot necktie.

Styling, I was not.

Ready for the Grand Illumination Parade, I was.

As I wrote a little while ago, Carol Tayloe of Tayloe Associates graciously let me be a part of their burgeoning Illumination Parade tradition of carrying a balloon in the parade. This year Tayloe got Jerold the Bookworm. I met up with the group in Harbor Park 90 minutes before the illumination to receive the costume and instructions from a representative of the company who owns Jerold.

“Don’t pop it,” he barked, and that was about it.

That’s it?

“Keep it’s head up,” he said in what I imagined to be an accent from deep Jersey, if such a place exists. “People like to see the head.”

That left us about 88 minutes to stand around and wait. Tayloe Associates is a court reporting firm full of kind, regular folk. We adjusted our top hats and eyed the competition.

“Sweatshirts with their names on them,” someone said. “Please.”

Hello child.

Last year Tayloe had won the award for most spirited team, and they weren’t looking to give up the crown to some group wearing sweatshirts. Then Carol Tayloe’s daughters arrived.

“And here’s how we make sure we win,” she said with a broad smile as she introduced me.

“You’ve got that right,” I said.

Us balloon holders were the nerds holding the ropes. Tayloe’s daughters, both around 20, were in school girl outfits and would be skipping and handing out candy along with their equally “Hit Me Baby One More Time” video back-up dancer worthy friend.

I ended up with a rope in the back, by the bookworm’s butt and, to Hannah’s delight, away from the girl butts leading the way.

At 7:00 the lights on the buildings downtown went on. There was a little squeal of delight from the group of us assembled that would be holding the balloons, waving from floats, and marching in the marching bands. With the skyline bright, the stately Harbor Park stadium behind us, and The Tide’s first cars off to the side, it was easy to feel like I was some place with more than a future; Norfolk on Saturday night felt like somewhere with a very real, and enjoyable, present.

*   *   *

Finally it was time and we took our place in the procession. The high school band behind us started playing and chanting. The girls started skipping. As we left the parking lot I got a genuine rush. I was about to walk down the main strip of my adopted city wearing Michael Jackson gloves and holding a giant balloon of a cartoon animal that only exists as a giant balloon. This was what I was talking about.

The crowds were gathered in force outside of Waterside, packed three or four deep. I had never really understood parades before I was in one. Then, as soon as we hit that first group of spectators, I got it:

The purpose of parades is the excuse to wave at and make eye contact with the strangers that are the human soul of your city or town.

When else do we interact with people we don’t know in such a joyful, totally non-opportunistic, unsexual, non-commercial kind of way? Kind of never, right?

I shared smiles with toddlers. With old ladies. With servicemen. With people of every race Norfolk has to offer. The Louis Armstrong line kept bouncing around my head:

I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do’… They’re really saying, ‘I love you.’

There we are.

Along the way a bunch of people in the crowd I knew yelled my name at me. For someone who has only lived here a total of about seven months, Norfolk felt the most like home it ever has.

“Spin! Spin!” the little kids all shouted, and we obliged as much as we could. At one point on Granby my hat got knocked off by the balloon. The most amazing thing happened next: One person in the crowd handed it to another, who handed it to one of my balloonmates, who handed it to another, who handed it to me.

And isn’t that what being a part of a community is all about?