COLUMN: Fireworks

I've spent most of my life trying (and failing, rather spectacularly) to be cool. The last thing I ever want to turn into is a jaded and bitter old man past his prime using this platform to air some grievances.

That said, forgive me right now while I use this platform to air some grievances.

Well, okay, just ONE grievance -- and yes, I'm perfectly aware that it sounds like something straight from a manual on How To Be A Jaded And Bitter Old Man. But come on, Quad Cities: Can we just have a tiny talk for a couple seconds about fireworks? Look, I wanna be cool. I wanna be in with the in-crowd. But please, oh pretty pretty please, can we maybe cool it with the pyrotechnics for a bit? Say, until next July 4th?

We've already succeeded in turning the winter holidays into a three-month celebration that may as well just be called Thanksmas'oween. There's no need to turn Independence Day into Independence Month. The bastardization of Christmas can be blamed on retail fever and capitalist greed. But from what I can tell, the only reason we start celebrating the 4th of July in mid-June is that we, as a people, like to watch stuff blow up. 

By and large, I'm okay with this. I like to watch stuff blow up, too. If Netflix ever released a series called "Stuff Blowing Up," I'd binge-watch the whole season in one day, guaranteed. But "Stuff Blowing Up" should not be the ONLY TV show on the air -- for 24 hours a day -- that you're forced to watch for a month straight.

Ever since firework stands opened this year, my neighborhood's been a haze of gunpowder and smoke. Each night, the arrival of dusk has been heralded by a cacophony of pops, bangs, booms, and what I presume are majestically-colored fireworks illuminating the night sky. I wouldn't know, because I'm usually inside. I just get to hear the mortars and explosions.

I hate jump-scares. That's why I don't watch horror movies. I don't get the fun in getting the bejeepers spooked out of me. I'm also painfully aware of the amount of French fries I've consumed in my lifetime. I'm pretty sure my arteries have a finite number of jump-scares left. Let's not waste them on things going kaboomie in the night sky.

I'm all for fireworks that have a gentle little pop and make an aerial spectacle. But those aren't the kind of fireworks my neighbors buy. They tend to prefer the ones so loud they rattle windows. At some point, they stop being really impressive fireworks and start being really mediocre bombs. They might not decimate a village or anything, but they're certainly capable of putting the "hyper" into hypertension.

If you want to make a loud noise, that's fine by me. I hang out in DJ booths all weekend -- disturbing the peace is my usual side hustle. But if you're going to detonate explosives in the neighborhood, maybe a heads up? If someone knocked on my door like, "Hey, we're about to explode a dozen firecrackers," I'd be first in line to watch. But don't wake me up in a cold sweat at 2 a.m. with them, that's all I ask.

My one pandemic present to myself was a fancy new air purifier for my house. I thought it might help my tendency to start the day with a 21-sneeze salute to hay fever. It has a fancy gizmo that monitors the indoor air quality and doesn't even turn itself on unless it senses dangerous impurities. It has a gauge that displays toxic whatzits. Usually it reads 0-5 microns. If I use the Instant Pot, it goes up to 50-75. If I fry bacon, I've seen it raise to 125. 

On July 3rd - not even the holiday proper, mind you - I took a bag of trash out to the curb. I probably had my back door open for no more than fifteen seconds max. By the time I got back in the house, the air purifier had kicked on at max power and the readout was displaying 215 microns of particulate matter. That's how quick it took for the air quality of my home to go from "good" to "extremely poor / severe." That just can't be healthy.

Independence Day is an awesome holiday. As long as you keep a fire extinguisher nearby and aren't overly concerned about the number of fingers you'd like to retain, I'm cool with you blowing up whatever (legal) fireworks you want on the 4th of July. But maybe less so on the 3rd. Or the 5th. Or mid-June. Or, as the case may be, RIGHT NOW (one just went off a few doors down from me this very minute.)

Or maybe you should just let the professionals handle the red-white-and-booming and not waste your money on something that will literally explode before your very eyes. Better yet, just give ME your money and then sometime in the coming month, I promise to sneak up behind you and yell "BOOM!" real loud. Unless, that is, I'm at the record store -- if I'm going to make an unholy racket every night, I promise it'll at least have a beat you can dance to.