Our bead throwing buddies Johnny and Robert were sporting some spectacular float finery.

This past weekend was all about parades here on our return visit to New Orleans.

I’m not sure why, but it was worth standing in the pouring rain Sunday waiting for the float to pass on which our friends were riding, so that we could be singled out to be thrown those REALLY NICE beads. (I’m special! I’m special!) We so need to feel special.

Yes, I will always treasure my hand-embroidered Princess Leila ornament, caught during a Close Encounter with the Krewe of Chewbacchus Saturday night, one of several new parades to emerge in recent years from our old Marigny-Bywater neighborhood. What could be more fun than a rolling Star Wars convention? (It also brought back memories of an equally fun Star Trek parade earlier in our adventures.)

And then there was the ‘tit Rex parade. Well that’s not really the name anymore. Because now the “e” has been replaced with a schwa.

Thanks to the schwa, this tiny parade continues to roll.

Just in case you haven’t yet made the acquaintance of this symbol used to denote the vague multipurpose vowel sound found in words like “fudge,” “the,” and the last syllable of “sofa” —it looks like an upside-down “e.”   I Googled how to create the schwa symbol using my laptop and here’s what I found:

• “If you go into system preferences ‘international’ select ‘input menu’ then check both ‘character palette’ and ‘show input menu in menu bar’. Now ( if your default language is English US), you will have an American Flag icon on your menu bar. Click on it and a pull down menu will display “Show Character Palette” highlight and choose this option and a character palette window will open allowing you to insert any of literally hundreds of character options. If you select ‘View-Roman’ you will have the choice of Math, Arrows, Parenthese, Currency Symbols, and Punctuation plus 9 more. ‘Punctuation’ will have what you need.”

Never mind. I’ll just spell it out.

So why you might ask, did they go to the extraordinary typesetting effort to make the substitution? Well who knew that a bunch of artsy hipsters walking through the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood pulling miniature floats behind them would be perceived as a threat by the landed gentry that comprise most of the old-school Krewe of Rex.

But yep, a couple years ago, their lawyers threatened legal action against the then newly formed parade.

To be fair, it was all very genteel. The old Rexters were afraid that if they let one entity use the name unchallenged, there’d be a flood of copycats and they’d lose control of their branding. Sort of like Kleenex I guess. And after a conversation about various options, a solution was chosen.

Schwa to the rescue.

One of my favorites. When I passed by the creator of this float had engaged a young admirer in a fascinating discussion about homonyms.

This parade may rival Krewe du Vieux when it comes to bawdy political satire.

A favorite new addition to my vocabulary.