Boomer Girl Diary: Fireworks love has fizzled

It’s official, folks. I have become a fireworks fogey. This comes as quite a shock because, back in the day, I was a snap-crackle-pop-loving, pyromaniacal wild child. I couldn’t wait to get outside on the Fourth of July and set off my bag of firecrackers, snakes and smoke bombs with my posse of punk-toting pals.

I wouldn’t say we were fearless, but our collective creativity was impressive. There was nothing we wouldn’t blow up (or attempt to blow up, anyway): Tin cans, Coke bottles, Army men, cat toys, Barbie doll heads, old transistor radios, play phones and even my box turtle, Yertle.

Hey! It wasn’t my idea. It was that sadistic rascal, Jay-Jay Ink. I remember it vividly (well, as vivid as my selective memory will allow):

There’s Jay-Jay lifting Yertle out of her cozy home in our window well. I beg him to put her back, but he assures me she’ll simply retreat into her protective shell, and no harm will come. In the back of my mind, I know Jay-Jay has lost touch with reality, the result of watching too many Road Runner cartoons.

He’s thinking if Wile E. Coyote had 1,000 lives, Yertle must have at least two! But Jay-Jay is like the godfather of the neighborhood. Nobody defies him. I’m afraid to protest too much.

I watch in horror and curious fascination as he twists three Black Cat firecrackers together by the wicks, sets them under Yertle’s tail and ignites. But Yertle, sensing danger, takes off across the patio as fast as her little turtle legs can carry her. (Forget “The Tortoise and the Hare.” Turtles are surprisingly swift.) As the Black Cats explode a few feet away, she withdraws into her hard case. I’m sure her little turtle ears are ringing, just like mine.

Undaunted, Jay-Jay tries again. This time, he sets the Black Cats in front of her, as if the animal is so dumb and instinct-less, she’s going to walk right on top of a burning fuse. My Yertle is way too smart for that. She takes a hard left turn and bolts for the bushes as the firecrackers go BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

“Enough!” I cry, grabbing my petrified pet in a fit of never-before-seen fearlessness. (Sure, I might wake up with a severed stallion’s head in my bed, but at least my conscience will be clear.) I carry a clearly shaken Yertle inside to safety, leaving Jay-Jay alone with his punk friends.

While the incident didn’t diminish my childhood passion for pyrotechnics, I wonder if my Fourth of July karma changed forever that afternoon when I released Yertle into the wild.

Years later, as a parent, I began to dread Independence Day. It was fun taking the kids to the big striped fireworks tent, but my stomach seemed to be in a constant knot from July 2 through 5. First, there was the exorbitant cost — our hard-earned money literally going up in smoke. Then, there was the ever-looming danger of fingers and toes getting obliterated, all that inconvenient blood and screaming, the exorbitant bill from the emergency room.

As the mother of a boy — and with Yertle never far from my consciousness — I worried what my son and his pals might be blowing up down in our creek. I never ventured out to ask — adopting my go-to “ignorance is bliss” approach — so I sat inside, with our poor skittish dog, hoping all reptilian creatures were tucked away safely in their habitats.

At night, I would sit on the driveway for my husband’s annual fireworks extravaganza, incessantly worrying about the roof going up in flames. I prayed the shingles in question would be ours and not the neighbors — especially the mean neighbors whose vengeance would be worse than a dead horse’s head under the sheets, believe me.

These days, the whole business just makes me cranky. I’ll hear a string of firecrackers go off a few blocks away and gripe, “Don’t they know that’s illegal in the city now? Kids these days. Why, I oughta call the police …”

I enjoy the public aerial displays at night but, even then, I lose interest after about 10 minutes. Unless someone figures out how to spell my name in sparkles across the northern sky, I’m unimpressed.

So, there you have it, folks. I’m a fogey. It’s sad, really. But I take comfort in knowing that, somewhere out there, an old box turtle with post-traumatic stress disorder is smiling.

Godspeed, Yertle. Watch where you step.

— Cathy Hamilton is a 53-year-old empty nester, wife, mother and author, who blogs every day at BoomerGirl.com.