Sky rockets in flight

Note: Originally published in the Journal Tribune prior to the Fourth of July.  In case you find yourself thinking that somehow I missed the boat.

 

 

 

Burning your earlobe with a white-hot sparkler isn’t something you forget very easily. I was 6 when it happened, and the incident still retains a crystalline clarity in my mental Rolodex of life experiences – which means it was either 1) an important event, or 2) I was some sort of child genius who, at some point, sacrificed his uber-memory to the golden god of Heineken. Either way, it hurt.

 

It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often. Far from engaging in anything out of the ordinary, I was merely doing what kids do: Waving the sparkler around in the air and trying to draw words and boobies with the light tracers. One sweep of my arm was a little too grandiose, and the low-grade firework slipped from my hand and landed on my right ear, inflicting what I remember to be a pretty painful singe. Years later, professional boxer Evander Holyfield had part of his lobe chomped off by an apparently malnourished Mike Tyson; when it happened, I recall knowing roughly how Holyfield felt, minus the residual crazy-man slobber.

 

At that age, I was too young to ruminate on the ways in which we celebrate our nation’s birthday. You’re not exactly reflective at 6. It stung for a while, I was comforted by doting parents, and minutes later I was back in my play area with a stack of scrap paper and a box of crayons. Drawing boobies, probably. I was a very committed child.

 

Now, though, I can take a step back and regard the whole sparkler-lighting ritual with some modicum of objectivity. It’s sort of a strange pastime, this whole fireworks thing.

It would be disingenuous of me to claim any real expertise on colonial America. To be an expert, you need credentials, like a show on the History Channel that isn’t filmed in a pawn shop. But anyone possessing even a glancing familiarity with the nation’s origin knows that the whole saga of America’s birth – from the first shot fired at Lexington to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia – was pretty solemn stuff. People sacrificed their lives to secure our autonomy from England. Fireworks, which ostensibly replicate the whiz-bang explosions of those long-ago rockets and bombs, seem like an odd way to mark the occasion. It’s like commemorating V-J Day by dropping a giant rock on a diorama of Hiroshima.

 

Fervent patriotism has never been my thing; in particular, I’ve always been confused by the slogan, “Proud to be an American.” Pride, as legendary comedian George Carlin pointed out, “should be reserved for something you accomplish on your own.” None of us, save for immigrants, accomplished being an American. We were born here by accident. It’s not a skill, like juggling pomegranates while tap-dancing “Annabelle Lee” in Morse code. But I’m happy to be an American. It was an undeniable stroke of luck that I was born in a country that allows me the freedom to say what I want, think what I want, and purchase any number of fine edibles from the dollar menu at Wendy’s. That being the case, I’ve always reminded myself to be thankful for the men and women of the military, who remind me daily that the bravest thing I’ve ever done was to return soup at a restaurant. It’s thanks to their heroism that I don’t have to say words like “bloody” and “wanker,” unless I’m recounting the time I got in a violent car wreck with Joe Wanker. They carry on a tradition started by the militiamen of our embryonic republic, and they deserve mad respect.

 

Blowing things up is an odd way to show it.

 

Don’t get me wrong – despite my random sparkler attack, I like fireworks. They’re fun. Sure, the dog might get scared and high-tail it to the nearest Ramada Inn (true story), I might come close to setting the front-yard evergreen ablaze with an ill-placed Roman candle (also true), and I might get a smidge too exuberant and melt part of my head (see above). But despite all that, I’ve got some genuinely nice fireworks-themed memories. They were a tradition in my family. Morning glories were always my favorite; many an evening I stood leaning over our porch railing with two or three in hand, anticipating the sudden change from steady, white-hot fizz to multicolored pop-snap crescendo. There was always a faint melancholy whenever the last firework petered out and was snuffed by a warm summer breeze; I can still smell the sulfur, still see the pockmarks left in the grass by Roman candles and their ill-gotten ilk. Totaling up each of these instances, how much of my life have I spent waving sparklers around on that porch? Twenty minutes? Forty? A blip in time, yet each moment now seems somehow important, treasured fossils of a receding past.

 

So I can’t exactly recommend that we stop it with all the light shows. There’s too much of my own childhood at stake, and besides, the practice is too ingrained – too much a part of the Fourth’s celebratory nature – to put the brakes on now. It all just seems not enough somehow, like there’s something additional we could be doing that doesn’t necessarily invoke the blood of heroes.

 

Powdered wig party? Appropriate, but weird and lame. Cookout? We already do that. A viewing of “Rocky IV,” in which an American flag-clad Rocky Balboa pounds the snot out of a genetically enhanced Russian? Maybe. Let’s see how we feel after steak and beer.

 

Mostly, it’s important to take a moment to remember what the holiday is supposed to be about – not the battles, but the freedom they won. Me, I’ll be at the lake, celebrating America’s lax censorship laws by drawing boobies on a sketch pad in a hammock.

 

Because if unabashed chauvinism and sexual perversion isn’t American, then our noble republic simply has no hope.