The 5th of July is Just as Boomtastic

As someone who didn't grow up anywhere near Pittsburgh, the concepts of townships and municipalities and that thing where there are 17,023,623 separate little governments within one county has always baffled me. I just don't get the purpose of having all of that duplication of services and such.

However, when my kid suddenly decides she is done being scared of fireworks, I use and abuse all of that duplication to the best of my abilities. A little googling here and there and I found myself a township that was doing their 4th of July celebration on the 5th of July.

HUZZAH! MORE STUFF THAT GOES BOOM!

You just go on with your bad self, Pittsburgh. Keep up all that redundancy.

(An aside--that photo is straight out of the camera. I kinda love that it looks fake when it's not.)

A Different Sort of Reaction to the Booms

As we crossed under the bridge in Point State Park, gray hairs began to spontaneously sprout from my head and wrinkles dug in their heels on my face. I was easily the oldest person anywhere in sight, just as long as you excluded the security guards and police officers scattered throughout the crowd. As far as the eye could see there were herds and herds of teenagers. Very few appeared to be old enough to drive, but what do I know? I'm the person who thinks Justin Bieber is still young enough to cruise around in a blinged-out stroller.

Each little herd of teens stood laughing and yelling and completely ignoring the fireworks that were booming loudly just a few feeet away. I thought the purpose of going to Point State Park on the 4th of July was to see fireworks, but obviously I was wrong. As the urge to yell, "SHUT UP AND GET OFF MY LAWN!" overtook me, I busied myself with trying to take photos of the fireworks as I balanced Alexis on my hip.

As Alexis oohed and aahed about pyrotechnics for the first time in her life (HUZZAH!), I couldn't help but notice some of the very loud conversations around us.

You guys. YOU GUYS. I'm pretty sure the current generation of teenagers only knows about six words. All of them are words of the four-letter variety that I don't use on this site. Observations like this are how I know I'm old.

And then it happened for the first time. An oddly sharp-sounding firework broke through the cacophony and a few dozen teens panicked. "That was a gun!" someone yelled as they broke into a run.

It wasn't a gun.

And then it happened again. One boom for some reason sounded differently to a group of kids who weren't the least bit interested in the fireworks. They absolutely and completely panicked as they ran for their lives. There wasn't a hint of giggling or light-heartedness. They were genuinely afraid that something terrible had just happened in the midst of a celebration of freedom.

The thought of hearing gunshots in the midst of a crowded park during a fireworks show never once crossed my mind when I was a teenager. It's a different world we live in now.

There Is Hope For Her Yet

When Alexis was just about six months old, she decided to briefly flirt with mobility just long enough to launch herself off of the bed. She landed with a loud thud, squarely on her giant noggin as I tried to lunge and catch her from just a few feet away.

Spoiler alert: She was fine.

That day we learned that she had a superpower. That superpower is that she can hold her breath until she passes out. She inhaled to get enough oxygen to let out the biggest scream of her life as I hurriedly picked her up from the floor, but the scream never came. Instead she silently went limp in my arms.

I believe Alexis planned on titling her first book, "How to Win a Trip to the Emergency Room in Two Easy Steps." It was going to be a short book. Step 1: Fall off of the bed. Step 2: Pass out. TA-DAH! Trip to the ER!

Numerous tests were run and in the end, she was declared to be just fine and dandy. But the doctors missed something. They missed the fact that the part of her brain that was genetically programmed to love fireworks was broken.

I mean, C'MON! FIRE! It's right there in the name! FIREworks are the bestest!

Alexis disagrees. You know, because she's broken.

When we go to Disney World, we have to leave before the nightly fireworks show. When there are fireworks at Pirates games, the kid has a panic attack. Every year she spends the 4th of July bawling and demanding that I make the fireworks stop.

Sure, kid. I'll just confiscate every single firework on earth. There's room for them in our basement, I'm sure. The FBI won't find that suspicious or anything.

Imagine my surprise when Alexis turned to me this evening and said (this is a direct quote--I memorized it so I can have it engraved on a plaque so that I can forever remember this wonderful day), "Mom, can we go downtown and watch the fireworks?"

I might have thrown the patio table out of my way as I rushed to scream, "YES! WE CAN!" Never mind the fact that it was already 8:45 and fireworks were starting at 9:45. WE WERE GOING TO MAKE IT THERE YES WE WERE.

And we did. We pulled out of our driveway at exactly 9:01 and pulled into a parking garage downtown at exactly 9:19. I always thought we live in Egypt, but apparently it's only Egypt-like when there are other people on the roads. Who knew?

We made it about ten steps towards Point State Park when the very predictable happened. Alexis froze in her tracks, looked up at my with her best sad eyes, and said, "Momma, I changed my mind. Can we go home?"

NO, WE CAN NOT. I had just broken the space time continuum to get us downtown in time, so we were marching forward. THE END.

We marched and marched and found our way to Point State Park and we watched those fireworks. Alexis kept her ears plugged the entire time and she very nearly found her way back into my uterus using osmosis, but by golly, SHE WATCHED THE FIREWORKS AND SHE DIDN'T MELT.

Best 4th of July ever? Best 4th of July ever.