So, my family is really big on fireworks. In years past, my brothers and I have tried numerous times to blow ourselves, and innocent bystanders, to bits. We love making stuff explode. That's why we really love the Fourth of July because all other Americans join us in our passion for potentially deadly entertainment.
Now usually we are down at the shore in Ocean City. We rent a beach house and stay for a week, Saturday to Saturday. We play all week and love the fireworks show down by the boardwalk. They spend over a million dollars on fireworks! The show usually last over 30 minutes. It is amazing. Unfortunately, this year the Fourth fell on the Saturday that we had to be out, so we had to find alternate fireworks. And this was not the year to be trying new places. With the way the economy is going, a lot of towns cut their fireworks budget completely. (Good for budget, bad for pyromaniacs.)
My brother went online and found some not too far away. The directions said to go to this park, but when we get to the park, there were only a few cars there. Even though we were early, we knew something wasn't right. We finally asked some people who were leaving and they said that they had heard the fireworks were going to be a the nearby high school. So we drive over there, and we found all the people. Cars were parked for miles. Now, keep in mind, we have three kids under the age of 8, all of whom could run a mile in 5 flat, but if they are commanded to walk, "their legs are tired." After driving around, and hearing a lot of whining, we found a miraculous parking spot not far from the back corner of the field. We found a big open spot, spread out our blankets and waited.
Now, just to give an idea of how organized this show was, nobody knew which direction the fireworks would be and they said they started at "dusk." Try to explain to a 3 year old how many more minutes until dusk. But we had fun. We chased fireflies, ate candy, my nephew literally jumped on my dad yelling "Wake up!" But by 9:15, we all were getting antsy. People were shooting of their own fireworks, so nobody knew what was going on. Then we saw flashing lights behind a bunch of trees on the other side of a hill. They kept going, but we could hardly see anything. After 15 minutes they stopped. My parents thought that we had ended up in the wrong place and had missed the show. So they started packing up to go. I can't really blame them, because by this time, it was 9:45 and we had tired kids.
As we started back to the car, my niece lost it. She had been looking forward to seeing fireworks all week. She just kept crying, "This is the worst Fourth of July EVER!" We get to the car and just as we start to climb in, the sky exploded. Turns out, our fireworks show was waiting for another show to end, but they didn't tell anyone. We all ran over to a spot where we could see. And it was awesome. About of fourth of it was blocked by trees, but the kids still loved it. I had my 3-year-old nephew on my shoulders and he just kept shouting "WOW", "COOL", and "BIG BOOM!" Ahhh, the next generation of explosive lovers.
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