This is a cute little story about how a man selling plastic, crappy toys at a parade was incredibly rude to me.

The Starlight parade in Portland was a few weekends ago, and, because my sister is on the Regatta Court and therefore in the parade, my whole family caravanned down to watch. It is important to know that before the parade started, we were camped out on the sidewalk for six and a half hours.

So, the parade has just started, but there’s a pretty sizeable gap in between the floats, so Mom and I started to talk about another float we had just seen. We were in mid-conversation when my dad looked up from his phone and started talking to Mom over me.

So I say something like, “Hey Dad, we’re having a conversation, hold on a second.” Well, this old, graying man who was selling all those cheap toys for exorbitant prices, as is common at parades, stopped in front of us and said, “I didn’t know blondes could have conversations.”

Know let me tell you, I was not about to just be insulted by some random old white guy on the street, especially by a blonde jokes.

I hate blonde jokes. For some reason, most blonde jokes are about blonde women, not blond men, because of course, it’s only blonde women that are airheads. Furthermore, if he didn't know that blonde people were capable of conversation, he was the stupid one.

Anyways, so I am just sitting there, completely shocked by the sheer audacity of this man, who is probably hoping to sell some crappy toy, to just completely insult me. Now, I am sitting with my parents, my brother, my cousins, my aunt, my grandma, literally my whole family, and they all have the same expression on their face that I am sure I had on mine: utter, utter disbelief.

I know what I have to do. I have to come up with a witty retort. Unfortunately, I am not the best at those. However, I hit him back with the “Well, blondes can also get straight A’s in college.” Boom, mic drop. I felt pretty good about that comeback. Unfortunately, the guy couldn’t scurry off to bother other people, because some lady came up to buy some of the over-priced plastic toys for her kid.

So, the parade is starting again, and this rude-ass man is still standing in front of us with his gigantic cart of poorly manufactured, overpriced toys, completely blocking our view of the whole parade, not to mention that it is never pleasant to have some random stranger who just questioned your ability to have a conversation standing in front of you. Eventually he left, and I will probably never see him again (fine by me). But if he somehow reads this, please know, insulting people is not a good sales tactic. Also, it in 2017, blonde jokes aren’t funny.

So, readers, I hope you feel as indignant as I did during that ordeal, and I hope you continue to spread the word to end blonde jokes. They just aren’t funny.