The 4th of July

A recent poll found that 14% of U.S. teenagers thought that the 4^th of July was the day America declared its independence from France, while 5% thought we broke away from Canada.  Now this is simply great fodder for a long-winded blog on the sad state of the youth of America (and would help support my argument on sending kids to school year round – though in all fairness it’s worth remembering that my real purpose there was/is to simply get kids out of the house 12 months a year), but instead I thought I’d write a blog on the 4^th of July holiday.

From what I can tell the 4^th of July is a lot like Christmas in that most people love the holiday, and yet they really don’t care what the actual holiday stands for.  Most of us aren’t really concerned that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ.  They love it because they get to decorate their yards and their houses with Santa and Snowman figures, and they get to open presents Christmas morning, and so on.  Just like no one really cares that the 4^th of July is a celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they love it because it’s an opportunity to hang out with friends, and to overindulge on food, and to start drinking before 5 p.m., and so on.

And I’m okay with all of that.  I certainly don’t sit around my house Christmas morning reminding my kids just how lucky we are that Christ our savior was born on this day.  I remind them that they’re lucky I got the last GI Joe with the Kung Fu grip at Toys R Us, or I thank my lucky stars that my wife liked her gift, as my chances of acting out my “Naughty Mrs. Claus” fantasy once the kids go down at night are now looking better.  Same is true of the 4^th; I don’t sit around talking to my kids about the Revolutionary War or the hardships this country went through just to break away from England.  Please.  The only thing I remind my boys on July 4^th is that I get half the candy they collect at the parade, and if they get sick eating too much “sweet stuff” they should throw up in the neighbor’s bushes as opposed to ours.

But from what I can tell, the 4^th is a strange holiday in that most people want to do a whole lot of nothing.  They basically want to hang out with friends, grill some food, mix up some cocktails, and do nothing.  It’s a celebration of doing nothing.  Even the kids are discounted.  The 4^th of July is pretty much the one day a year where as a kid you probably know you’ve got the green light to go anywhere or do just about anything.  Your kid wakes up on the 4^th and says “Hey Dad I’m going to Joe’s house,” and you say “fine.”  You don’t even ask if Joe’s parents are home.  You just send your kid out the door.  Or maybe you walk to the annual parade together, but once there your kid sees a couple pals and wants to go hang out with them. . . “okay, sounds good.”  Hell, by 3:00 PM I’d argue that most people have no idea where their children are.  Which is fine, but it does seem strange that on no other day of the year is such latitude granted to kids. 

And speaking of that “annual parade,” you can pretty much count on three things regarding the traditional 4^th of July parade:

#1 – It will be 90 degrees and humid.

#2 – It will not start on time.

#3 – It will feature bands from other towns, other communities and other states.

And that always confuses me.  Why are these bands traveling to other towns, communities and states?  What are their own home towns doing for bands?  Do these other towns need to import bands from other areas just so that they have live music at their 4^th of July parade?  What type of motto do these bands have . . . . “Have snare drum, will travel?”  That part of the parade is very confusing to me.   

But no question my favorite part of the 4^th of July holiday is the fireworks show.  And what’s not to enjoy about a good fireworks show?  It’s a legal show featuring dangerous and potentially deadly explosives.  I love it!  However and maybe it’s simply because the skies are now dark, and the sounds of meat grilling on the barbeques have been replaced by loud bangs that echo through the night, but it’s usually right around this time that people are hit with three things:

#1 – They are officially suffering from heat stroke.

#2 – They are officially going to regret eating all that onion dip.

#3 – They have officially LOST THEIR EIGHT YEAR OLD KID!

That’s right, what seemed like nothing more than a tradition six hours ago, now seems like something DCFS should get involved with.

Right around 9:00 PM people begin to realize that their children are missing and they really have no good idea where they might be.  The people they thought were watching their kids are now sitting 10-feet away from them to watch the fireworks show with no kids in sight.  Text messages start to go out, and husbands and wives begin pointing fingers over who had the kids last and who gave them permission to go where.  Again, six hours ago you didn’t care whether they were going to ride bikes at the local park, or head to the public pool for a swim.  You were just thrilled to get rid of them, and yet right around the time the skies are about to light up with bright colors you begin to panic.  We found our child walking down the street to watch the fireworks with another family who hadn’t even been at our celebration. 

All’s well that ends well…but we did have a chat with our youngest about leaving the party without us and without any idea of where he was going.  We’re just lucky we live in a neighborhood where other families will look out for your children.

So, for now, we try to recover from the heat stroke, go on a diet and pay closer attention to where our children are.