Now that’s what I call a close encounter!
I’ve never understood the appeal of lighting fireworks.
This can be partly explained by the fact that I lived most of my life in California, where the Fourth of July is typically celebrated by the cooking of hamburgers, the imbibing of beer, and perhaps by the watching a brief montage of fireworks wedged into the midst of the Twilight Zone Marathon whilst simultaneously singing Lee Greenwood’s Proud to be an American or Niel Diamond’s (They’re coming to) America in a drunken fit of patriotism. Actual live fireworks were always banned, since they involved heat and explosions and Southern California consists entirely of kindling, charcoal briquettes, plastic surgeons, and smog.
I remember one year as a kid we celebrated Independence Day as a family at my grandmother’s house. After the sun set, one of my uncles revealed that he had smuggled in sparklers from Mexico, and promptly handed them out to the children so that they might know the magic of multicolored arson. We promptly lit them and watched in fascination the showery explosion of light and sparks that flew off the end of the stick, which promptly burned my grandmother’s house to the ground and inconveniently forced us to watch the rest of that year’s Twilight Zone marathon at the neighbors. The following year, that same uncle smuggled in some Flowers, and no sooner did he light them that the little cylinders scuttled across the street in a blaze of multicolored light and burned the neighbor’s house down instead. The year after that, we stopped doing Independence Day as a family gathering.
Simply put, I don’t understand risking life and limb — well, mainly limbs, I guess — to play with explosives whose only purpose is to make a razzle-dazzle display of bright pinpoints of light and percussive blasts of noise, particularly when I can reasonably simulate that effect by, say, rubbing my eyes particularly hard while listening to Aphex Twin.
Of course, it’s different in South Dakota.
In South Dakota, by contrast, the only point of Independence Day is the intoxicated igniting of dangerous incindiary rounds. Now while live fireworks are banned within the city limits where we live, in neighboring Rapid Valley the lighting of fireworks is not only permitted, but is in fact a standard CC&R in most suburban developments. Coincidentally, it was in Rapid Valley that the Queen B, the Ladybug, and I went to an Independence Day party with friends and friends of friends, and so I made it my point to understand the appeal of lighting fireworks.
After an evening of pleasant conversation and all manner of consumed meat animals, we moved to the drive way to commence the pyrotechnics. As the sun dipped below the horizon, people up and down the block emerged from their homes like freshly risen vampires, clutching bags of multicolored bombs and rockets the likes of which would almost certainly lead to UN sanctions if they were discovered. Withing minutes, the sky was alive with fiery explosions and sonic blasts so loud they felt like stakes driven into my ear canals. Sure, the lights were pretty, but they’re just as pretty when you view them at, say, a professional fireworks display at the Civic Center — and here they were a helluva lot louder, and after a few minutes of it, then entire street was basked in an eery asthmatic funk of gun smoke. The Ladybug, who was initially delighted by the lightshow, quickly tired of the noise and smoke; clearly that could not be the appeal of fireworks.
I decided instead to ask around. It did not go well, initially.
Most of my initial requests went something along the lines of “I’ve never lit fireworks for the Fourth of July… What’s the big deal?,” and these were greeted either with incomprehension or patriotic indignation. As one partygoer announced between angry chugs of his Budweiser, ”Fireworks are our Second Amendment Right, man! [ Chug ] The Second Amendment grants us the right [ chug ] to bear arms [ chug ] and by arms [ chug ] they refer to all manner of explosives [ chug ] then it stands to reason that it ought to grant us also the right to blow off our own arms with said explosives. [ triumphant chug ] God Bless America, and give me another Bud!”
In fact, after watching the haphazard fireworks show for a while, I realized the he had in fact revealed the main appeal of fireworks…
Beer.
Lots and lots of beer.
Apparently, beer is crucial to the personal fireworks experience for several reasons.
First off, many of the fireworks launched require some sort of cylindrical “launch vessel” in which they can be placed to maintain a vertical orientation during the lighting of the fuse, and the typical beer bottle is of optimal dimensions for this task. Hence, if you wish to launch several fireworks in rapid succession, you need to have lots of empty beer bottles at your disposal. Thus, to adequately prepare for the lighting of fireworks, one must drink copious amounts of beer beforehand.
Secondly, the attending beer buzz not only heightens the aesthetic appeal of the lightshow (oooh! aaah!) and also conveniently impairs one’s judgment so as to make the lighting of potentially deadly high explosives seem somehow safe and fun, thereby allowing the process to continue.
Thirdly, it’s beer. Beer adds to the appeal of anything.
Satisfied with my conclusions — and recognizing that the Queen B was in the midst of an asthma attack from all the burnt gun powder in the air and the Ladybug’s ears were bleeding from the noise — the Komplexify family said its goodnights, piled into the car, and carefully drove off into the night.
As we drove through the neighborhoods of Rapid Valley, illuminated under the stroboscopic glow of a sky caught on fire, evading errant bottle rockets from the air and erratically exploding firecrackers and smoke bombs on the ground, I realized a second, and more profound appeal for fireworks: they reminded me of all the reasons I love living in the United States by making it, for one very special night, look and feel like Iraq.
