There is a general fear in our family surrounding fireworks. I believe I shall now delve into the root of this fear. It might have something to do with my father essentially lighting Mike and his new Christmas sweater aflame, shooting bottle rockets at the deer in the backyard to scare them away from the shrubs. But probably it has more to do with this:
Two years ago, when Mitch was a week away from being two, and Matty was quite literally 10 days old, Mike and I foolishly decided that, despite having a brand new baby, we were going to try to get out to do things to enrich the lives of our children. Sure, it would have been easy to wave a sparkler or two at home and throw the kids in bed on time, but we decided that we wanted to go see some fireworks. We spent all day researching the best place to go. I even went out at nap time and drove around to the various town parks with a checklist of criteria to see which show would best fit our needs. Things like easy in, easy out parking and showtimes. We decided to go just across the bridge to the Destin Commons shopping center. Large parking lot for easy access, plenty of grassy places to put our blanket, and we planned to go extra early, set up at a great spot, and then let Mitch go play at the playground until showtime. Brilliant!
All was going according to plan. We found a great location (so we thought). Right up front for maximum viewing enjoyment. Fools. Total and utter fools. The site was set up, Mitch was playing happily at the playground, Matty was dozing in the stroller, enjoying evening air. Mike and I even remember chuckling to ourselves, thinking, "See. We can do this. Everything is under control."
It was almost showtime, so we headed back to our spot. Here is a photo of the men taken moments prior to the disaster. See how unsuspecting and cute they are? They had no idea about what terror was about to befall them.
Well, the "show" started and we quickly realized some errors in our planning. The first being that we had chosen a cheaply done fireworks display, and the fireworks were not the kind that actually went up in the air before exploding into beautiful colors. They were more the kind that stayed on the ground only a few feet from your precious babies and emmitted a shower of sparks in every direction. And the noise, oh my the noise. It was so incredibly, eardrum splittingly loud. We were covering our children's ears with our hands, while trying to shout to each other about what was going on. But the final straw was when the hot, burning wrappers from the fireworks started to rain down in a shower of destruction...onto us. Firework ashes, still aflame, falling down onto our family. It was awful. We grabbed everything we could, still trying to cover ears, and ran for the car. We threw kids in and closed the doors, just to get away from the sounds, smells, and raining fire. Mike went back out into the madness and folded down the stroller and put it in the trunk, then scrambled back into the car. We buckled kids in car seats from inside the car, not daring to open the doors again, lest their ear drums shatter if they had not already. Mitch was in tears, Matty had not woken up a bit, convincing us that his hearing was gone at the first firework explosion and that we had ruined him for life. It was a complete disaster. Worst parents ever.
Last year, we were at our friends home. Mitch watched all the neighborhood kids light sparklers from the dining room window inside the house. There was no way that he was going out there.
Yet, we are not to be defeated! We are planning on heading to the army base tonight, where we will have earplugs on hand for all participating ears, and we will get a spot far, far away from the action and maybe, just maybe we can celebrate the birth of this nation without further scarring our children for life.
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