My Own Personal Fireworks

This has always been my least favorite holiday. As much as I love the bar-b-ques, the parades, and others' fireworks displays (especially the big city-sponsored shows), I really have no affinity for fireworks up close and personal. They scare me. They're dangerous. They're stupid. I'm always happy when the 5th arrives without a visit to the emergency room. I just plain don't get the thrill of intentionally lighting a fuse to watch something shoot or sizzle or explode at a temperature of a gazillion degrees right in front of one's face.

And now, in the most cruel irony of Mother Nature, I feel like I deal with my own personal fireworks displays many times a day. I can feel the fuse being lit somewhere deep in my core and at that point I know it's coming. Within nano-seconds I am suddenly awash with emanating heat and sweat, and my only thought is an intense desire to strip completely naked and either jump into the refrigerator or turn the garden hose on myself. During my own personal fireworks display (and it is a display -- I turn beet red, radiate heat, and sweat profusely), I am a prisoner of my physical self and can do nothing but wait it out. If I'm alone or with family, I take action -- I grab the nearest flat, light object and fan myself profusely, I strip as much as possible without mortifying teens, I run outside to bask in cooler temperatures, or I frantically adjust the fan speed on the ceiling fan. But if I'm in a public place when my personal fireworks explode, I can only wait them out, hoping no one walks close enough to me to be ignited by the radiant heat -- giving "radiant" a whole new meaning, dammit!

And while I'm whining about the holiday, I'll mention that "independence day" has a whole new meaning this year, too. The kids are all busy with their own celebrations -- Elisabeth with her new boyfriend, Peter and Kat at friends' summer cabins, and Aleks with local friends -- so Tom and I will be independent tonight, celebrating the holiday on our own. Poor guy... he loves everything about the holiday that I don't care for.

I think I'll suggest to him that we call our dear friends Debbie and Neal. He loves dangerous, exploding fireworks too and she... well, I have a feeling she and I could share our own personal fireworks experiences.

Sigh.