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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Why I Hate July 4th


I've always hated the shrill- screeching siren like noise of a firework being launched. It sounds as though the area has come under attack and at any moment insurgents may take hostages. I always get that sense of impending doom when I hear fireworks. Always. I can remember back to the days when we had a Hill's Department Store. They always put on a big (at least it was big to me) fireworks show each 4th of July. My parents would take me there, park the car in the parking lot, and prop themselves up on the hood along side all the other families doing precisely the same thing. But not me. I was always shivering, trembling, knees knocking, palms sweating, locked in sheer panic and terror in the floorboard of the back seat. Occasionally peeking out between parted fingers to see if the coast was cleared yet. Silently praying for the ordeal to be over. Drifting off to my safe place...
Year after year the same torment awaited me on the Fourth of July. And year after year I squeezed myself as low into the floorboard of the car as I could muster so as to be safest from the obnoxiously loud little rockets of death.
Fast forward...
It was July 4th, 1989. I was a teenager, 15 about to turn 16. My friend, Sunny (purely coincidence that my dog and my old high school friend share the same name, really.) called me up saying she'd gotten permission from her sister to drive her new Sunbird. It was sweet, it had a sunroof and a nice stereo, you know, mandatory equipment for any teenage driver. Sunny and I cruised the mall, the lake, visited friends and shopped all day. as the evening waned, we decided to cruise around with the top wide open, to best enjoy the night air, the view of the overhead pyrotechnics, and to air out the cigarette smoke. She and I were alike, neither of us keen on shooting any rockets of death ourselves, both content to view them from afar. I don't remember who we were headed to visit, or pick up, but I do remember the exact spot of the exact street we were on when my "irrational fear" of firecrackers began to make sense and morph into more the "premonition" status. We were in a subdivision full of kids having bottle rocket wars on the sides of the streets. Suddenly, the sound of a million missiles being launched from within the hatchback of Sunny's sister's brand spankin' new Sunbird startled us. Just as Sunny said "What the hell?" and turned the radio down, the assault began with a vengeance. Projectiles were being launched in every direction. Smoke quickly filled the car. We became hysterical and somehow ended up in a ditch. When it was all done and over with, Sunny and I had burns and cuts across our faces, arms, and legs. The car, burned. Smoke billowed from every orifice that Sunbird had to offer. What we found was a gross of bottle rockets, some kids, with great aim I might add, had launched into the sunroof as we passed them by. Knowing this had turned into a very bad scene quite quickly, they all ran in scattered directions, so they were never found to be punished. The police made a report and helped us home. Sunny and I were left with even more reason to hate fireworks and July 4th than the noise and childhood fear we'd carried prior to that night.
To this day, when I hear fireworks, I think of being trapped in my seatbelt, in that car, with bottlerockets exploding everywhere, unable to protect myself, unable to escape, smoke choking me. To this day, I HATE THE FOURTH OF JULY!

14 cookies cracked:

Jay said...

Well, that would certainly do it. I keep my distance from all fireworks. I'm just accident prone enough to blow myself, or someone else, up.

Leighann said...

When I read the title of this post I immediately thought.... "How can anyone HATE the 4th of July??"

Well, now I know!

Dana said...

I have one of these stories as well. It was when I was 10 and my cousins decided it was a good idea to throw sparklers in the air so they looked like "real" fireworks. Everything was fine until one landed on my head and started my hair on fire. Who knew that 10 years later Michael Jackson would make this stunt famous?!

I still get really, REALLY nervous around fireworks!

Mandy said...

damn kids

I dont blame you for hating the fourth..

Leah J. Utas said...

Oh, my. No wonder.

Fortune Cookies said...

jay - you and I both, you and I both...

leighann - leave it to me, eh?

dana- sparklers? OMG! that damned MJ, who knew? I'd sue him for royalties!

mandy- it's not as bad now, but I do hate fireworks still. I don't mind to watch them from afar, just never up close.

leah - yup. such is life, i suppose.

gary rith said...

Holy carp, you poor thing! We found our first dog loose on the streets of Chicago on July 4 1993, and he was terrified of fireworks. We always figured that was how he got to us: kids and firecrackers bugged him in his yard and he ran and ran and ran. When he was very old he was mercifully deaf and no longer quaked at loud sounds....
anyway, I always wondered why we didn't celebrate when the US was truly independent, which was when we defeated the British, and my memory is not exact but I think in 1781 at Yorktown, then we were free. Although, if you were a slave, maybe 1865, more or less, would count as Independence day, or maybe if you're a woman Independence Day would be when they got the vote in was it 1929? And maybe the Cherokee and Sioux and Iroquois sure don't think of it as Independence Day....But I suppose 1776 was when the ball got rolling, and this country as imperfect as it is TRIES to be fair and free.

Reb said...

OMG, I don't blame you!

Karen said...

Holy crap! I would say that is a very freaky thing. No wonder you are scared. I actually love to watch fireworks, but they are very illegal for the average folk here in NJ.

Anndi said...

Can't say I blame you...

Chatty said...

That is a horrifying story. I'm so sorry. It would put ANYONE off fireworks. Me, I love to watch them, but from afar is preferable, because that whine IS weird and unsettling.

Real Live Lesbian said...

Yikes...that's scary! Glad you made it out. I don't like 'em either. A friend of mine had one eye because of fireworks. It made a huge impression on me.

I'm a scaredy cat!

Real Live Lesbian said...

Yikes...that's scary! Glad you made it out. I don't like 'em either. A friend of mine had one eye because of fireworks. It made a huge impression on me.

Ima scaredy cat!

Anonymous said...

It's now July 3rd, 2009 and I live in white trashville in San Jose, California. Don't be fooled, most of Californians are unfriendly miserable selfish uneducated people. Businesses have to reso many hquire so many H1 visa's to provide educated engineers and scientists or there would be no business in this state. The 4th of July is NOT patriotic. War vets don't like fireworks, it makes them flinch. It's for a bunch of short dicked white guys that stink and drink beer until they look 9 months pregnant. THey usually drive huge pickup trucks and have done so many drugs they could not spell 3 letter words. They wear there hats on backwards and are half bald. THey have bratty kids that scream all day and wifes that have been lobotomized for self preservation from living with what is equivalent to maggots on dung, so somehow she had to lose her mind. The state has gone to the dogs and North Korea would to the US a favor if they flattened California into a wasteland. We are broke, busted, and disgusted, and I am definately not in the mood to see the dolts shoot off hteir sky rockets for 3 hours while the Sheriff's Department chugs donuts and lets in all happen. Californai was once a great stae, and it would be better off looking like the dark side of the moon. I woudl be hard pressed to find one decent person in this state. My neighbor sprayed Roundup all over his berries and killed my fig trees and will not man up. There are no good people anymore. If you don't live in Califonia, boycott it forever. It is a human sesspool of garbage.