posted 2007/06/27 at 20:19
There's something about me -- I think it's more of a mental thing than a physical thing -- but for some reason I always seem to be awake way late at night during each solstice. Although I'm just about the furthest thing from a morning person you'll ever meet, for some reason I need to be up at around 0500 on the day of the summer solstice to see just how light the sky is then. (Actual sunrise here doesn't come for another hour, but you can definitely see a difference in colour between the western and eastern skies at around 0500.) Even right now, even though we just had a fairly massive line of thunderstorms come in and really darken things, there's still enough light out that kids could be out playing at around this time. In fact, a couple of weeks ago as I was writing an entry here at about this time of night, I was a bit taken aback by the sounds of kids playing that late at night, and needed to remind myself that schools had just broken for the summer.
The Fourth of July is coming up, of course, and my sister and brother-in-law are trying to determine which of the local fireworks festivities they want to hit up. I can remember back when my parents took me to those as a kid, but after a while we just stopped going to them for some reason. These days Mom likes to watch the programmes put on PBS and A&E, whereas I just really don't care about anything like that anymore. I really don't know why, and I feel like I'm missing out by either not going to a show or even watching one on television. (We can usually see a few fireworks our neighbours put off from inside the house, but they're never all that spectacular.) I don't know, maybe I'll try to tag along with the kids when they go out, although I'm guessing that I'll probably run into some problems with the food being offered, unless by some miracle someone's cooking up some tofu dogs.
I guess one of the things that's always kind of rubbed me the wrong way about fireworks is how all the kids I knew growing up loved firecrackers and bottle rockets. I mean, I see the attraction of the stuff that shoots up and, for lack of a better phrase, make pretty colours, but all firecrackers and bottle rockets do is make the same loud noise, over and over again, and I can make a noise nearly as loud just by clapping my hands together really hard. The only thing I can think of that could possibly explain this is just how kids -- particularly young boys -- think it's cool to play with fire, and perhaps get a bit of a visceral thrill from the danger of possibly blowing their own hands off. Not that I was ever that much of a thrill-seeker growing up, but I never really saw the attraction in that.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon