It's almost the Fourth of July. Blown anything up yet?
All right, for most people, asking someone if he's detonated something isn't the way you typically start your day. Unless you have relatives like mine. In which case, that statement is followed with, "on purpose?"
But, in case you missed all the Independence Day sale flyers, Saturday is the day we celebrate the birth of our nation by taking piles of money and lighting them on fire while igniting low-grade explosives in what's probably a wildly unsafe manner supported by absolutely no training or particular skill.
I'm really not sure how much more American you can get than that.
Now, before you think this is going to devolve into some snarky diatribe about misplaced priorities, wasted resources and the appalling lack of personal safety many people practice, all in the name of celebration, let me say this: Hand me the lighter.
Yep, I've been blowing stuff up for some time now. Almost all of it intentionally.
As a teenager, it was, basically, because teenagers like to blow up things. It takes less time to break them that way. And you can hold a lighter and a slice of pizza at the same time (again, is this a great country or what?), thereby satisfying most basic pre-adult needs. Which would be the desire to destroy stuff, make a lot of noise and eat.
Later, it's for the same reason you go to the go-cart track or the toy store -- namely because, as a father you have the cover of doing something nice for the kids, when in reality you just want to drive the little cars really fast or play with the laser gun.
Unfortunately, this carries with it the responsibility of at least pretending you know what all that stuff in the big tent with the inflated animal out in front of it does when you go fireworks shopping with the family. Let me help you. Smoke bombs smoke. Everything else blows up. Sometimes there are pretty colors involved, but in all cases, you get an explosion. Good idea to remember that, particularly when you're standing next to something and your mind has kind of wandered.
For most of your children's formative years, you are the official fireworks lighter for your family. Eventually however, you have to pass the torch (or lighter, but for the sake of illustration, torch) on to the next generation and allow your offspring the opportunity to take over the show.
Which is quickly followed by your taking the torch/lighter/torch back when one of them puts a mortar in the tube upside down, which causes the thing to fall over and send a small rocket screaming at your neighbor's boat. Sort of your own little Francis Scott Key experience, except the sound you're hearing from your wife isn't exactly a national anthem. Unless it's the national anthem of the Nation of Idiots, of which she's decided you are the president for life.
At that point, you decide turning your children loose on the fireworks with no formal training, while consistent with your own personal history, probably isn't the way you want to go.
That's when you set out to establish critical ground rules like the need for a clear, level spot from which to light off the fireworks, the importance of proper safety gear like protective eyewear and shoes, the necessity of good lighting to see what you're doing and the healthy respect you should show the explosives.
All of which lasts about 15 minutes. After that, you're stacking mortar tubes on top of already exploded shell boxes, you've lost the goggles, you're twisting five and six fuses together to make a really big explosion, you've discovered the batteries in the headlamp are dead and you're just kind of setting the box on fire in the hopes of hitting the fuse and if you do light it, you're trying to run away in flip flops, which looks sort of like someone trying to escape while wearing flippers.
This goes on until you've run out of fireworks, lighters, interest or have gone at least partially deaf. Then everyone heads off for ice cream.
In the morning, the dads all go out with push brooms and leaf blowers and clean up the mess. And life goes on.
That's sort of the way the country works, isn't it? Something happens, we make a lot of noise about it, stuff gets blown up and messes get made. Then we all settle down, count our fingers and toes, determine we have the same number we had previously and whatever has gone on hasn't really impacted us all that terribly. Then we go have ice cream.
The next day the sun comes up, just like it always does. And the adults get out the leaf blowers and push brooms and clean up the mess.
Yep, this is a great country. Despite our stance on particular issues, we'd be best served to remember that.
Have a happy and safe Fourth of July.
Gary Smith is a recovering journalist living in Rogers.
Commentary on 07/03/2015