The idiots specially gifted people in my neighborhood have been lighting off fireworks around my house for the last week just to make sure that their ears still work and that the fireworks continue to make loud popping sounds.  Their sober under-aged children might have some serious, lifelong emotional trauma if their intoxicated parents didn’t light off loud and visually stimulating fireworks from their homes on July Fourth – so they do it starting in June.  Last night for example I was doing an exercise that I like to call ‘sleeping’ and a neighbor was shooting off some sort of popping whirring thing (I grew up in Nevada where they kill people who have fireworks before the fireworks kill them, so I don’t really know which type of firework it was).  If it was before 10, I might have thought I was grumpy, but it was post midnight, so I figured that there was some special problem with their ears or fireworks because they were still testing them.

I’m considering buying some fireworks and lighting them off myself next year because there seems to be this sense of amazement and awe that can only happen if you do it at your house.  I have never wanted to do this.  Fireworks amaze the girls, and I love it that they’re impressed, but I draw the line at exploding them at my house because I like my house.  I want my house to keep not burning up, and continue not needing to be repaired due to fire damage.  I’m a selfish guy like that.  In a dry climate like Colorado, you could light a fire just by wearing corduroy paints that rub together a while and then sit down on some dry wood, so inviting danger to my house to come and blow up is not my first choice.  OK, I’m done considering this option.

However, my first choice is to let other people,  with fire fighters nearby, light off the fireworks.  Each year many cities across the country do this in a celebration called, “lighting your tax dollars on fire and sending them off to blow up,” and we live in one of those cities.  We’ve managed to never see the show they do because of rain or any number of other silly reasons, but this year, we just might go… that is if our neighbors don’t manage to blow us up first.