Remember when Independence Day wasn’t just the title of a Will Smith movie? Remember when we used to think about the significance of the day, not just blowing stuff up in the back yard? Well, actually I remember being a kid and waiting all day for my parents to take us to see the fireworks, but I still remembered the meaning of the day. It wasn’t just about getting drunk and shooting bottle rockets at each other.
Ok, it was about hot dogs and macaroni salad too. And fireworks. And don’t get me wrong, it’s still about the fireworks. The whole rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air thing. It’s in the song, we can’t forget that.
But today isn’t just about celebrating and watching pretty lights in the sky. Today is about a bunch of founding fathers signing a really old piece of parchment and deciding we were a free nation, no matter what the crown said. So yeah, we should try to remember that while we’re stuffing our faces with hot dogs and domestic beer, and shooting off explosives with reckless abandon. People are still out there laying down their lives so we can risk ours with Chinese pyrotechnics.
So put that in your bottle rocket before you smoke it.
Until the next time…I’ll be maning the hose and making sure the pyromanics in my family don’t blow up a chicken.