Let Freedom Ring!

Alternate name for this post:  "And then I became an old lady"

When I was a little, little girl I remember sitting on the back of my Dad's truck and watching all the fireworks that the neighbors were setting off.  It was magical. In the morning my sister and I would gather up all of the debris in our yard (also magical) and dump out all the powder.  I'm not sure what we did with it, but sometimes we were extra lucky and also found a parachute guy or something. 

At some point when I got a little older my Dad actually brought us some fireworks of our own (that he said an Indian gave him which was always what he always said when he brought home something fun.  I really thought he worked on or near a Reservation.  He did not.  At least not that I know of).  Pretty soon we had convinced our parents to get us a whole bunch of bottle rockets and we had bottle rocket wars with the neighborhood kids.  Where was the parental supervision?  It was all fun and games and no one got hurt...at least not badly.

Not long later we had completely scrapped our own fireworks, or perhaps it became illegal, in search of the biggest and best fireworks shows we could find, complete with music, funnel cakes, a billion people and one hundred billion mosquitos.  (Side note... I am proud to say I have been to two of the nations top five firework shows).

And then I became an old person with kids of my own that go to bed before dark and the holiday got much less fun, I thought.  Around 9pm on July 3rd all kinds of crazy fireworks were going off right outside our windows.  Little Mister didn't like the noises one bit...until we took him outside to see what it was and he exclaimed "I like fireworks".  It was adorable but I was still upset that there was so much noise "while people are trying to sleep" - see, old lady.

By the 4th though, I had loosened up and thoroughly enjoyed the holiday by having friends over for a BBQ and to watch fireworks.  Or maybe things have just come full circle and now I am once again content to sit back and watch the festivities from the comfort of my own home.