Happy 4th Of America!
If my calculations are correct, it’s just about 7:30 p.m. EST on this current year’s 4th of America. That means it’s still light outside because, you know, farmers require their ever-lovin’ sunshine to sow their night crops of barley, hay, and thyme. Or something. I forget how most things, including Daylight Savings Time and a well-balanced mentality, work. But soon, those solar-powered rays will hit the bricks and retreat from our global atmosphere. Our day vision will recede into a galactic ocean of globby drainage and darkness will envelop us, wholly. This is the way of things. But what am I telling you for? You’re alive. You get it. You know how our universe fights itself into a coma every evening. How we are left with no other choice but to go to bed and dream of daylight. Because that’s the only means it has of returning in the morning. It feeds off our shared, unconscious desires for its warmth, God we are a special breed. We humans.
But upon this one night of the year, we are treated to a spectacular showcase of most outrageous entertainment! On the 4th of every America, we blow up the stars with our wheezle wobblers and our crackjaw kloppers! Are you ready for it, kids? Here clones the Seusserstrodder! Whoaaaaa!
Fireworks For Days
When I was a kid, I was younger than currently am or appear to be. And in that youth, I would often times find new and bizarre ways to make merry my jolly. During Christmastime, it was simple. Eat some tinsel, paint an elf on a reindeer, pants a snowman — there was literally an endless supply of juicy December games available to fools like me. But come the 4th of America, what could you do? The fire that works only begins to blaze during the witching hour: 9:30:or:so, per usual. Building up to that precious marksetgo, as you can imagine, was both dramatically tantalizing and nauseating to the point of physical exhaustion and over stimulation. We had to make do with our wits and our frontal lobe manifestations, just to keep ourselves alert, alive, and Albuquerqued! So this is what we did. And this part, I swear is the truth. If you’re holding your breath for the movie, exhale. It’s been in post production for decades and at this point, I think it’s safe to say that it will never see the lights of days. So spoil yourself up — here it comes.
What We Did!!
I had (have) a friend named Ron Dean. Cool name, right? Well, keep your applesauce to yourself because he’s got his own midday snacks! Ron was (is) the Dean of Cool! Whenever he walks into a room, the music stops, skips, reverbs, turns over, twists, inverts, jams again for two seconds, leaks, crescendos, then pulsates and pupates into liquid jazz.
And Ron Dean drinks it.
What is this Seoul? Hey, Amerkuh’s got seoul! 4th it up, world!
Way back when, Ron and I were sitting in his driveway. The date was the 4th of America. The year was 1990-something, give or take an aggression/digression. I know it was the 4th because all the neighborhood kids were skulking around, wishing and washing it were nightfall so they could have their blessed flopperdoodles and whizzernutters. The heat of the hot was akin to a scorchy torchy and there was no water gizmos in sight. Things were slowing down. Seeming grimy.
“Ron,” said I.
“Bry,” said he.
“Every year we same it up. We’re like two shmuckos in a valley of shmuckaholics. Why do we never take back our 4th? For the sake of all things America, we should be whopping our own sacred talisman of multicolored flames!”
“By book and by crook,” said he. “I believe you’ve stumbled onto it!” And then Ron Dean did the most remarkable thing! He stood on his feet with his toes pointed forward, and gave a silent whistle. (Which is to say he did not whistle.) And in that striking moment, I knew our forever fates would change.
The Fate D’Change
We rushed inside Ron’s home where he lived with his various family members. We splintered our way past the father cursing the phone book’s alphabetical structure. We blursted into Ron’s room and slammed the door. For here, the great work would commence.
He had himself one of them old timey boomboxical devices on which you could capture your voice speaking a word or several words or a sound or a chorus. Without a second thought, he pressed “Record” and there, on his rug of carpets, we gave our souls to the music of booms.
“Boom!”
“Kuzbass! Kuzahh!”
“Tishhhh zing zing zing!”
“Ooh look at that one go! Waka cha bootinanny!” and so forth. We caroused out our very own symphony of sound effects for what was to be our greatest show on fourth.
Next, we raced outside and found ourselves dozens of twiglike sticks and sticklike branches. We painted those wooden marvels with a pirate’s rainbow multiplex of crayons that barely made a color. When we’d acquired at least half a handful of barely passable art experiments, Ron hit play on the quixotic boomboxical and oh did our previous recording of less than 15 minutes prior outshine even my recklessly fresh memory of it!
“Boom!”
“Kuzbass! Kuzahh!”
“Tishhhh zing zing zing!”
“Ooh look at that one go! Waka cha bootinanny!”
As we listened intently to our past selves mastering the effects of sound, we tossed our terrible, makeshift fireworks in the air. And you know what? Something incredible happened — we didn’t die.
When gravity took over (as it does tend to do), the twigs and branches erupted and clattered and scattered on the ground by our feet. Snippets of crude, red and yellow and maybe green Crayola markings looked up at us, as if to say, “Why? What is wrong with you?” But we just answered back with our true-to-form cheeky catchphrase:
Because, America.
Every Story’s Moral
The moral of the story is one that is not alighted upon as casually and carelessly as one might think, unless you’re Captain Morality and you see things as they are. If such is the case, bully for you! Does that work well with the ladies, Cap? For all others, I offer it plainly and full of happy exposure: When the lights go down in the city, And the sun beams on the bay, Oh I wanna be there in my city. Ohh. Oh. Oh Ohh whoa oh.
Journey to the center of your heart and you will uncover every firework you’ve ever exploded. This is not a fiction. I would know. Because fiction is stranger than truth. And these patriotic colors don’t falsify.
ENDING GOES KAPLOOEY!
This guy’s on your team
Next week on Bloggy: A special appearance by Ron Dean! Yes, believe it or not, he is a real human of a being. Believe it!!
