I searched for a recent thread about folks blowin’ themselves up & didn’t find any. So I’m starting a new one.
My story, my act of complete and utter genius? We’re at a small airfield, where the local residents up an down the runway are setting off thousands of dollars of explosives in a beautiful display of red, white, and blue. I walk over to a pile of fireworks where my kids and brother in law are busily lighting fuses & tossing towards the designated “explode stuff here” zone. Then we would be treated by what looked like a ball of light buzzing and spinning around for a few moments before sputtering out. I hadn’t yet indulged, (in truth, I hadn’t as much as lit a sparkler since somewhere in the mid-90’s) so I eagerly grabbed the first thing I saw, lit the very long fuse, and tossed it.
Now. Before I tell you what happens next, some advice. Never, NEVER light an “artillery shell” and just throw it. It seems you’re supposed to drop these little buggers in a tube, light the aforementioned long fuse, then run like hell. The shell then launches itself a million feet into the air and explodes.
So, back to the tale. Anyhoo, the (you guessed it!) artillery shell I threw landed in the vicinity of the “explode zone” and well, exploded. Everyone was awash in a shower of pretty blue and white sparks. Afterwards, they just stared at me with a “what the hell was that and why did you just try to blow us all up you frickin maniac?” kind of look on their faces. :notasmileytodescribehowdumbifelt:
After it was verified that everyone was ok, I was quickly handed a margarita and shuffled to a chair where I was told to just sit and watch for the remainder of the evening.
Oh yeah, my 8-year old walked up to me & said, “Dad, I’m really mad at you. There’s a burn on my leg. Look!” When I bent down to look, I didn’t see anything. He then threw a handful of those “snap” things that exploded on the back of my head. He giggled with glee and ran off. Ok, I guess I deserved that.
Anybody else get blown up last night? Or almost blown up?
Last night actually went mostly injury free. My only injury was when I burned my thumb with the cigarette lighter while trying to light the little fuse-lighting-stick thingie.
A girl on the boat next to ours lost her bikini bottoms and kept slipping while trying to get out of the water. Yup, it was a darn shame, since every time she tried, she’d just get her bum above the water level and a wave would hit and bloop back in she went.
I lit a bunch of Safe 'n Sane fireworks in the backyard and got scorch marks on the concrete. I’m glad there wasn’t anything more noteworthy than that.
I don’t have an instance from July 4th, 2002, but I remember one from about 1958, in Palmdale, CA, when I was about 9. We went to a place off the Sierra Highway in the Antelope Valley (about 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles) for the 7/4 weekend, called the X Motel. July 4th was a Saturday, and there was an after-dark party near the pool. Somebody had bought a large box of fireworks at a stand nearby and set it, lid open, on a wooden table near the pool. Some jerk lit a cigarette and didn’t watch where it landed. The smoldering match landed right in the box of fireworks! Everything went off at once! Unforgettable…
My cousin blew up the end of her finger with a firecracker. Does that count? We didn’t see the act, just the aftermath. Her dad her finger looked like the end of a hotdog that you microwaved for too long.
I’ve got a series of 4 pics documenting a July 4th night of lunacy in grad school. One of the guys had just graduated and we were burning all his furniture in a bonfire in his front yard. The first pic shows everybody gathered around the fire and someone tossing a bag into the flames. The next has everyone beginning to pirouette and run as bottle rockets and roman candles begin to shoot from the bag, which apparently is packed full of fireworks. Everybody but one drunk guy that is. The third pic shows the same guy still standing there with all sorts of ordinance shooting every which direction but he just got his hands in his pockets. The 4th has him taking another swig of beer, still oblivious to the carnage all around him.
Actually… just throwing artillery shells around is pretty fun. We do it every year around September when we’re lighting off all the extra fireworks from the 4th and can never seem to find the damn launcher tube.
Just make sure you can throw pretty far.
Of course, we also have bottle rocket wars with each other across a field. A shot in the nuts is worth 2 points. Some asshole always brings a Saturn Missle Battery tho’ and sends us all scattering.
Now sparkler bombs, another tradition, are the true and complete shiznit. For those of you who don’t know what they are, well… you don’t need to know. But for those who do, can I get a collective “Awww sh*t yeah”?
A few years back, we were lighting fireworks in our driveway when a police cruiser rolled by. He stopped and, since we were a good suburban family rather than a bunch of hoodlums, just warned us that fireworks were illegal. We stopped, and then my dad (who’s a university professor, I might add, not a mouthbreathing yokel) said “We can’t light fireworks out here…but they can’t stop us from lighting fireworks in our own home…” So we trooped inside, and lit off a ground bloom flower on the tile floor. Through the pall of smoke we see it get jammed under something, its jet of flame burning the doorjamb like a blowtorch. We doused it pretty quickly, and my mom put the kibosh on any more indoor fireworks after that. There’s still a big char mark on the doorjamb, though.
My irresponsible ex brought my son a bunch of big-time fireworks up from Kentucky. Well, naturally, I wasn’t about to give a 12-year old serious explosives, so I confiscated them. I was afraid he would find them and blow them up anyway, so over a bottle of rum and 1,000 beers, my husband and I decided to throw them into the fire pit and be done with it.
We had to belly-crawl back to the house. My husband said it was like being in 'Nam again. After about a half hour of really cool light show, it finally stopped. Yes, I know…I’m an idiot.
Oh goody, I’m not the only stupid fool here. One of my ex’s friends saw my sons playing while I was BBQing. To cut to the chase he gave me some fireworks for the boys, bottle rockets and firecrackers, both illegal in Oakland. But then so are the safe and sanes. Cut to 9:30, the neighborhood kids are setting off their fireworks, and I’ve been reluctantly talked in to setting off the fireworks.
My wife is holding a bucket of water and acting as lookout. I’ve already setoff about a dozen bottle rockets and decide to set off some firecrackers. I twist the fuses of five packs together when my wife says “police car” and I pull my hands in close to my body. The only problem was I was holding a cigarette in my right hand to light the fuse unintentionally putting them close together. The first three or so popped in my hand, before I dropped them. Luckily I have only singed socks to show for it.
I’m glad there wasn’t anything more noteworthy than that.