Ahh, summer is here. Time for cookouts, baseball, and ridiculously high electric bills because even though climate change is a hoax, it keeps getting hotter and hotter every year and the AC has to work overtime to prevent your house from becoming a giant death box. Weird.
It is also time for another grand American tradition: fireworks. The grand spectacle of blowing shit up real good. We in general love blowing things up. It’s why we inexplicably watch Michael Bay movies and somehow decided to vote Trump into office. But at least fireworks represent good, wholesome fun, right?
Absolutely not.
Fireworks are horseshit. They are edged out only by parents asking when they will get grandbabies on the annoying scale. It’s one thing when cities schedule official displays for the Fourth of July. At least those are scheduled so you can plan accordingly if you don’t want to deal with it. It’s also different if you live in a rural area. Being more secluded means you are less likely to have your explody time affect other people’s lives.
But people who live in more urban and residential areas can fuck right off with their bombs bursting in air. My neighborhood is a residential area on the outskirts of a metropolitan area. The housing is TIGHT and packed together. Yet most nights of the summer there will be folks setting off fireworks despite having homes within ten feet of them on all sides. That means it could take nothing more than an errant fart to move their boom rockets just enough to do some major property damage.
There is also how freaking LOUD they can be. And having them go off just a few houses down isn’t just annoying, it can be downright disruptive. Anyone who has a newborn or pets would likely attest to how having explosions set off in the vicinity triggers a hellscape within the home that rivals being at an alt-right open mic night. It can also legitimately trigger PTSD in veterans. There is definitely some irony to people celebrating their freedom in a way that could directly harm the people who afford it to them, but it’s mostly just kind of a shitty way to show your patriotism.
Again, it would be one thing if it was limited to the Fourth of July, because then at least you could try to avoid it. But even as I write this, some asshole neighbor is firing off rockets and my cat is running to and from the windows because as far as she’s concerned the world is fucking ending. Though I guess I shouldn’t complain too much as it is a Saturday night. When the Fourth of July falls on a weekday, as it did last year and will again this year, I was listening to large kabooms until 2:30 in the morning, desperately trying to get a little sleep before having to wake up for work.
So please please please find a better way to show how much you love this country that doesn’t involve potentially setting your neighborhood on fire. Make red, white, and blue Jell-O jigglers. Actually pay attention to the shit elected officials are doing and be an informed voter. Delete InfoWars from your dad’s bookmarks on his computer. They aren’t as flashy as literal explosions, but on the plus side they also aren’t literal explosions.