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!
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