Summertime

by tess

Certain maxims prove inevitably true. April showers bring May flowers. June brides deliver Christmas babies. Summer holidays beget fireworks.

Each Memorial Day our neighbors throw an informal block party. Last year we thought about going and I even made key lime cookies to take with us. But then the actual getting-off-of-the-couch-and-facing-people-we-don’t-really-want-to-know came into play. So we stayed home and ate the cookies. This year we blew off pretending we might go and hid, safe from the strangers within the air conditioned confines of our little house.

Floridians tend to share a deep and abiding affection for fireworks which always strikes me as odd. Admittedly I grew up in a house where one’s safety was of paramount (bordering on paranoid) concern, but isn’t it a generally well-known fact that fireworks can be dangerous? Particularly when handled by children or mixed with copious amounts of alcohol? I haven’t a clue why it’s legal to sell them here. Me? I’d decriminalize pot and clog the penal system with all the idiots who jones for firecrackers. But that’s just me.

The annual block party provides a fiery venue for the Official Kickoff of Fireworks Season. The evening starts with “child-friendly” sparklers, spinners and jacks just as the sun is setting. Clearly one must pass one’s sacrosanct passion for fireworks on to one’s children. By what other means might they become future fireworks aficionados? Then the heavy hitters start exploding: the smoke bombs and snakes, fountains, cones, repeaters. Finally the evening ends with a bang: military and roman candles, Molotov cocktails, raptors, mortar and shell kits.

Of course the season reaches its crescendo on the 4th of July, but leftovers are parceled out for the inevitable Labor Day block party. Good old Floridians even rock their Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations with a bang.

I was worried about Independence Day fireworks because my kitten doesn’t generally enjoy noise of any kind. Boisterous people, loud televisions, and booming thunder send him scurrying for cover. But my concern was for naught; he could not be coaxed away from the sound and the fury. The sizzling, popping, bursting explosions of light and color hypnotized the little guy who finally gave up an hour after the final pop-pop-snap-BOOM. He climbed into bed, exhausted after the excitement of the block party. Come to think of it, he’s the only one of our cats to have been born in Florida. I guess his love of block parties and fireworks comes naturally to him.