July 03, 2010

• Alright then, I'll go first... There was only the one beer store open on the fourth of July, and the clerk was an old guy. I said I was glad they were open still. He said he ALWAYS worked on the fourth because he hated the holiday. It seems his son had been a fireman for the city, setting the fuses when one of those big show rockets blew his hand off :(
• A few years ago my older sister went temporarily deaf when a kid at the Independence Day party threw a firecracker that exploded near her ear. The first thing the kid said about the incident was "it wasn't me." This year, it rained pretty hard earlier in the day before most of the fireworks started. I was sort of hoping that the wetness would help mitigate any fireworks fires people accidentally start this year. But I still occasionally heard sirens around town.
• The first and only time I tried lighting firecrackers (because it was completely forbidden), my hands were shaking from nerves so badly that I lit the fuse right at the base and it exploded while I was holding it. Turns out that the tiny ones don't actually blow off your fingers. I was probably nine or ten, I guess?
• Oh, and when I was 16, we had a Guy Fawkes party at a friend's place, and accidentally set the neighbour's toitoi bush on fire. I was given the job of waking up said neighbour, who turned out to be asleep on his couch, naked, in full view of the glass door. That was more traumatic than the firecracker incident.
• Good story! Here's another old one... As an apple-cheeked thirteen year old child I once witnessed a potential disaster. A peck of magnesium filings found left over from the routing of letter press printing plates became mixed with ammonium nitrate crystals. These were placed in a large paper bag on a deserted road in a city park one night. Somehow they were lit. Maybe the bag was lit on fire and burned down to the mixture. I can't be sure now. I don't think there was even a fuse. Suddenly, from out of nowhere a car came rolling toward the gently flaming bag... OMG <:(o) !!! The poor driver came to within twenty feet before the mixture ignited. The resulting flare stood fifteen feet high with a diameter of a foot - like onto the pillar of fire that Moses witnessed in the movie The Bible. It exulted on itself for, I'd say a full minute, lighting up both sides of a hundred foot wide river before dying down harmlessly. I'm so glad no one was hurt!
• That is awesome! (Aside from witnesses, that is.)
• I love that passive voice in your story, Dan. Guess a few Mistakes. Were. Made. Eh? :O !!! No fireworks on the Fourth this year :( When they were getting ready the day before, someone screwed up on the static grounding, and everything went kablooie!!! Fortunately, only one man was seriously hurt. It was a spectacular (and LOUD) two minutes. There went $30,000.