Dark Dreams of Childhood.

I’m sitting next to a guy who came in carrying a Mardi Gras go-cup from 2023. The cup’s theme was Dark Dreams of Childhood. That was the theme of an old parade, not this year, but I could not remember what krewe it was.

I remember Steve and I talking about this parade because we both thought it was such an odd theme to pick. This is the first year in many that Mrs. King and I will not see Steve and Lisa for Mardi Gras. Ars longa, vita brevis.

There are no rules during Carnival.

I asked the guy with the cup what krewe wanted to commemorate the dark dreams that haunt our childhoods. Mardi Gras is the happiest time of the year. It is a time of fizzy lightness, and sparklers, and beads, and toys. The guy looked and twirled the cup around. The krewe’s name appeared nowhere.

We got to talking about it. He did not really seem to know what he was talking about. He thought that based on the theme and the look of the cup, which was kind of scary, that this parade must have rolled through the Marigny. “Maybe it was the Krewe of Krampus,” he said.

It did not come from Krampus. Krampus is in December and they do not pass out novelty plastic cups.

I said, “No it was a parade down St. Charles Avenue. It is an old krewe.”

The guy on the other side of the guy with the cup sad, “Hey, what krewe is that?”

We both told the third guy that we did not know. Nobody knew. Typical.

Time passed.

Then, out of nowhere, the guy with the cup piped up. “Hey! Listen to this everybody! I looked it up on my phone! This cup is from the Krewe of Orpheus, 2023.”

“That’s right! It was Orpheus this,” the third guy said like he really knew.

“That’s not really an old krewe,” Python Lady said.

Python Lady is relatively correct. Orpheus is not as old as Comus. Orpheus was founded in 1993, a blink of an eye in Mardi Gras history. The Krewe of Krampus is younger than that by years.

The guy with the cup said, “This cup is for sale for twenty bucks on E-bay!”

Hmm…. That is very interesting news to hear. Maybe I should go to more parades to catch throws next year.

Have a great New Orleans day today, wherever you may happen to be.