Pop! BOOM! Oh No!

 

      Pop! BOOM! Ohhhhh!

    That, my friends, is the sound of two very distinctive holidays: the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve.

    Sure, we’ve got  more important ones. Like Thanksgiving, that glorious holiday of food, football, and silently thinking, “how can I be related to these people?” The thing most of us are truly thankful for is the sight of their relatives backing out of the driveway.

    And of course, there’s Christmas, which isn’t really a holiday so much as a season, the season of overspending. Fun fact: the day after Christmas is a holiday that is quietly celebrated at Amazon headquarters. That’s when all their executives hold hands and sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

    However, the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve stand alone because they’re the only holidays we celebrate with fireworks.

    I was about 12 years old when I was allowed to light real fireworks. Not those sissy sparklers,  I’m talking Black Cat firecrackers, bottle rockets, and Roman candles -  all the gateway drugs of pyrotechnics.

    For a beginner, Black Cat firecrackers were the gold standard. And no kid ever lit just one or two. Oh no, you had to set off the whole pack at once. I usually duct taped them to some poor little green plastic army man. He served his country, but not for long.

    As teens, we graduated to Cherry Bombs and M-80s. Not the ones they sell now - those are weak and lame.  The ones we bought were stronger than a hamper of dirty gym socks. All of my high school buddies swore they were 1/16 of a stick of dynamite. I don’t know if that was true, but here’s what I do know: they could absolutely destroy an unpopular teacher’s mailbox.

    The procedure was simple:

1. Locate unpopular teacher’s house.
2. Open mailbox door.
3. Light Cherry Bomb. Insert quickly.  Close door. Run to the getaway car. 

    Most of the time the mailbox blew off the post and tumbled through the air like a defective Russian missile launch. Of course, we had to keep quiet about our nefarious activity because everybody said damaging a mailbox was a federal offense.

    Not that I ever saw anyone go to prison for it, but can you imagine?

    “Yo, what you in for, bro? Armed robbery? Car theft? Did you off somebody?”

    “Uh… nope. I assaulted a mailbox with a deadly weapon. Blew it away with an M80. Thought I got away clean, but the doorbell cam got me.”

    Teen agers and fireworks can be a lethal combination. One of my old high school friends learned this lesson the hard way.  Byron and three of my buddies were on the way to pick me up in his Mom’s Chevrolet Impala. When they got to my house and I opened the car door, I was greeted by the unmistakeable stench of spent gunpowder.

    “What the hell did y’all do in there?” I asked incredulously.

    “Barry can tell you,” Byron answered  sarcastically.  

   From the back seat I heard Barry’s voice, etched in pain.  “I was lighting cherry bombs and tossing them out the window.  But the back windows don’t roll all the way down, so I misjudged one. It bounced off the window right between my legs.” 

    I have very nearly been bitten by a water moccasin.  I have been on a roller coaster that is attached to the top of a 40 story building.  I have performed stand-up comedy in front of 10,000 people.  All of those things were terrifying, but they pale in comparison to the terror of watching a lit cherry bomb land on Sly and Your Family Stones.

   I gasped and caught my breath while Barry continued, “I managed to flip it into the floorboard right as it went off.”  

    Then he held up his leg, still oozing. It reminded me of half-cooked hamburger meat. Shades of gray and purple surrounded the open wound where the pants leg used to be, now nothing but tiny shreds of burnt cloth. But I knew he was lucky. If it exploded between his legs, Barry  might still be singing with the Vienna boys choir. 

    “We’ve got a plan.” Byron said.  “We’re gonna tell his mom and dad that a dog came up and mauled his leg.”

    There’s a good life lesson to be learned from this incident:  never mix immaturity with low grade explosives.  

    The whole concept of fireworks looks different as an adult  versus when you were a kid.  

    As a kid, it was magic - the sparks, the colors, the noise, the smell of gunpowder. When you lit that fuse you felt like you were harnessing the power of Zeus himself.

    As an adult, it’s putting up with your neighbor down the street who spent a week’s pay to buy a grocery sack full of incendiary devices that will keep you up until 2 a.m. Every time you’re jolted awake by another explosion, you wonder if this guy has to go to work in the morning. 

    Instead of saying “Wow!” I’m now saying things like:

• “That sounded like it blew up on our roof.”
• “ Are they really having Roman candle duels at midnight? 
• “Why does every firework explosion sound like incoming artillery fire?”

     My poor three dogs run under our bed and shake like a paint mixer. I have to use about a half bottle of CBD oil - then I gave some to the dogs.   And by the next morning, Facebook is filling up with posts like: “Lost cat, answers to the name Fluffy. Last seen during last night’s mortar barrage.”

    So now, my role in fireworks has changed. I don’t light them. I don’t tape them to army men. I don’t blow up mailboxes.

    I just sit on the porch, watch the sky light up, and hope nobody blows off a finger - or worse. 

    Because once you’ve heard an explosion followed by a mailbox tumbling through the air, everything else is kind of a letdown.