No Rockets, No Red Glare

A bit of a discourse from my usual subject matter, but I felt I had to address this.

    This past 4th of July, I had dinner with my dad - a thankfully much less awkward encounter than I thought it would be, with lots of laughter and good feelings all around. After we had dinner, he had to rush home to pack and rest up (being that he had to get up and get on the road around 4 am the next day), leaving Warden and I to our own devices for the evening. There weren’t actually any fireworks shows within a convenient driving distance (go figure) but we decided that some sparklers would be good enough for two people, since all we were going to do was cook hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire.
    We hit Meijer’s first - “no,” we were told, they “don’t sell sparklers. Sorry.”
     I insisted we go to Krogers instead: I distinctly remembered my friends’ parents purchasing fireworks (whoo black cat!) there when I was in high school. Again, no - and this time, we were told, it was illegal for them to sell sparklers. A quick run to a Rite Aid down the street (since we both figured maybe the drugstore would have some) was fruitless.

    In the next neighborhood over, we heard the occasional pop and whistle of festive explosions going off: but in our own yard, we sat quietly beside the fire, considering the holiday and where it is today.

Thinking of what we’d been told at Krogers, I did some googling.



According to allsparkfireworks.com there were over 540 fireworks displays in our state in 2010 - well over one a day on average. There were even more this year, and one of the safety websites for our state declared that you should celebrate the nation’s birthday by attending any of several professional displays rather than try to set off fireworks in the backyard - something now declared not just dangerous, but illegal.
    I guess I can understand wanting to keep fireworks and M-80s out of the hands of children and intoxicated adults: but it’s fairly common sense that fireworks are dangerous and should not be handled by children -  which, actually, is exactly the reason I was told that it’s illegal to sell sparklers in my state.
    According to the woman we asked at Krogers, “too many children were getting hurt by them, so they made it illegal to sell them in this state.” How many kids exactly? I couldn't find that number, but the statistics in that last link there, which quotes from a 2004 survey, tell us that “40% of fireworks injuries happened to children under 15 years of age,  23% of which happen to children under the age of five.”
    Holy crow - I understand that the things are pretty, but who in the world would hand a toddler a burning rod of metal?

Soon as you look away, I'm gonna jab this thing in my eye just to spite you.

    By and large, the injuries that result from fireworks are the result of irresponsible handling and use - the same of which is true of objects ranging from five gallon buckets to plastic bags to bean bags. Granted, you can’t blow your hand off with a bean bag - but would you let a toddler play with a bean bag unsupervised, given the horror stories associated with them and children?

    Where does consumer or parents responsibility come into play? If everything and anything that was considered dangerous was made illegal, well… it’s not even really conceivable. The United States would be nothing like what we know it as today, not just in standards of products, but culturally as well.
    Why make fireworks illegal completely, and encourage people to drive out of state or purchase and/or sell them illegally? Why not have classes or courses and licensing, much the same way most states do for guns and hunting, emphasizing education and being careful?

    For the first time in many years, mine was a 4th of July without fireworks - all because parents angry over their hurt children and watchdog groups would rather blame a product than take responsibility themselves.

    No, it’s not a requirement to watch explosions and eat roasted meat to remember the birth of our Nation: but neither is it necessary to sing songs and give to the less fortunate around Yule, nor is it a law that on Valentines that you have to buy a gift or show your loved ones that they matter to you. Traditions are traditions because we choose to carry them on, mindful of what they are meant to remind us of, the lessons they teach us, and the touchstones to our collective pasts which they provide.

    That night, drawing smoky trails with a stick from the fire, I wondered if the people who passed the anti-fireworks laws - which forbid pretty much anything that ignites, leaves the ground or makes a loud noise - considered this before deciding that rather than doing the work of encouraging safety and responsibility that the 4th of July would be better if people just didn’t have sparklers.

Better safe than sorry? I guess - but I wouldn’t have minded sitting with my boyfriend and watching some sky flowers bloom, the way I did last year, and way I have for most of my life with my family and friends when gathered together for celebrating unity during the anniversary of the Nation’s birth.