Thanks for this. He sucks.
I will be stealing this in the future.
He’s a fucking troll that should be banned.
This is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
I sleep well, and I’ve got plenty of experience sleeping through noise. That doesn’t mean that fireworks won’t wake me up. There is noise, and there is noise, and a person who sleeps through some types of noise can absolutely be woken by other types.
Before moving a couple of years ago, my wife and I lived on a busy street in San Diego, with our bedroom looking right out over the street. There were cars, city buses, and people at all hours, including drunks staggering out into the streets and laughing and yelling when the bars closed. We lived there for 11 years, and I managed to sleep through all sorts of noise. Occasionally something unusually loud or sudden would wake me up, but I would generally go back to sleep pretty quickly.
But the sort of sudden, loud pops created by fireworks are almost guaranteed to wake me up, and even if they are not constant, and one or two such pops every 15 or 20 minutes can disturb your sleep for an extended period of time.
This gave me a good, derisive laugh. All those soldiers who couldn’t snooze in a foxhole during WWI or WWII just needed to fix their sleeping habits, eh? Why didn’t anyone realize that? So many troops could have awakened fresh as daisies and brimming with energy after a night of bombardment!
Of course! Why, if people keep setting off explosions nearby, you could get as much as 15 or 20 uninterrupted seconds of sleep in between! Anyone who complains about that is just a crybaby, knowwhatImean? It’s not like interrupted sleep has any real consequences, right
Because, of course, the vets you drink with who don’t have PTSD and who, like you, have never seen action are all psychologists, right?
Of course you don’t. If you believed them, it would require changing your thinking, and we can’t have that now, can we? I was away this past Fourth but have been home the previous four Independence Days. Between about 9 p.m. and 3 p.m., the longest interval between booms was about 35 seconds. And these weren’t little firecrackers. These were mortars. I got a real chuckle out of the “move into a farm house” line. Very practical!
Bullshit. When I was a kid, we lived adjacent to the public fireworks display grounds. We were all out in the backyard enjoying the show and could hear the dog crying inside. Nobody was in there with her. As an adult, I witnessed the same thing. You know nothing about animal behavior, but you’re very good at dismissing anything that doesn’t echo your own experience and reflect the beliefs you cling to. What a shame.
This year was strange. Around here, fireworks are pretty much being set off all the time in the week or two leading up to the fourth. As soon as the sun goes down, and up until around midnight, you’ll hear them
But this year? Nothing. I really don’t know why, and none of my neighbors do, either.*
The biggest and (by far) the loudest fireworks are those in the city’s official fireworks show. The fireworks are launched from barges in either the East River or the Hudson River. And when the display is on the East Side, it’s pretty much right outside my window.
It’s a spectacular display. It’s incredibly loud.
I get why it’s terrifying for some dogs. And very stressful for some veterans. One of my daughters, when she was maybe two, did not deal well with the noise, although she got better about it by the next year and actually enjoyed the fireworks.
All that said, fireworks are an old tradition on and around July 4. Yes, it’s going to be rough for dogs, and some people, too.
But we can’t, and shouldn’t, in my opinion, end the tradition. By all means, rules (not bans) should be enforced to the extent possible. But people are going to set off fireworks, even where and when it’s illegal to do so.
* It’s really weird. Nothing. I mean, sure, once in a while I heard a few firecrackers going off, but that’s all. It can’t be the cops, because (a) they’ve never been able to do much about fireworks in the past, and (b) the NYPD has pretty much done nothing about anything for the last year. They’re not enforcing anything. It must have been a supply chain interruption, can’t think of any other possibility.
So the simple reality is, people who get easily annoyed by things, are tremendously likely to “exaggerate” the scope and scale of the problem. Frankly I disbelieve a significant number of people are exposed to “night’s long” firework sessions in their suburban or even urban neighborhoods. I’ve lived in a lot of built up places where people launch fireworks for days around major holidays, and it’s never been close to “constant” or for 8+ hour stretches as some people say.
Additionally, people who are easily annoyed by things, are likely to come up with reasons to justify their annoyance that insulates them from criticism. “It sets off my PTSD” being a common one. Nah, most of you just need to get over yourselves.
Is it possible some people have been exposed to “continuous, hours long” illegal fireworks? Sure. Is it possible some people with PTSD have had it triggered by fireworks in the background? Sure. But the frequency with which this claim is asserted by people almost certainly just being Karens about fireworks? Nah, that’s not real.
Frankly as someone who never sets off fireworks, the more nonsense complaints I see about them online and in social media, the more likely I am to buy a fuck ton of them next year and let them off for weeks out of spite.
Not in Missouri. The little city next to me (where they are legal as opposed to KCMO) had all of the firework tents set up as usual. I was out of town so don’t know how much exploding there was, but there was no shortage of supply.
DNFTSS
Exactly, except that it’s nothing like that.
Old man cries about fireworks.
Well, you are a hateful fuck, so that doesn’t surprise me. You see something that causes harm to others, and you just want to join in.
It’s even more telling that your spite wouldn’t be taken out on those on this board, who you, with no evidence or reason, are calling liars, as it’s unlikely that any of us live near you, but rather, on neighbors who did nothing to incur your misguided wrath.
Although, you did admit that fireworks are illegal in your area, so I hope you try to do so, and as soon as you start to fire off your first one, receive a nice hefty fine for violating your local ordinances and have the rest confiscated.
Just remember to take double or triple the safety precautions you read on line before doing so. You are almost exactly the demographic that ends up buying down someone’s home. In any kind of suburban or urban area it really does take effort to avoid blowing up the wrong thing. As someone who is just focusing on making people mad you’ll be most likely to skip a safety step to be extra annoying
I was awakened at 2:30 am last night (or this morning) from a couple of firework bangs. On the 8th? WTF?
People getting home from the bar and realizing they have a few more boom booms they were too drunk to find on the 4th.
“I think you’re lying about this thing ever happening, so I’m going to go and do exactly the thing I think never happens just to spite you!” isn’t the rhetorical flex Martin seems to think it is.
Sounds as good as any explanation I could come up with.
In my community, there’s “debate” going on about the sound of the relatively new F35 jets that are based about one mile from my home. Living under the take-off/landing flight path means regular disruption by incredibly loud jet noise.
I don’t consider myself hyper-sensitive to noise, but often have to stop my ears to avoid the sensation of pain, particularly if I’m outdoors. All conversation has to stop for minutes at a time as the compliment of jets take off or land. Working from home, I cannot hear my coworkers, nor can they hear me. Animals in neighboring homes start barking after they fly by. I’ve warched children and adults walking on the sidewalks cover their ears and recoil from the sound. It’s truly, objectively loud and disruptive.
Yet you wouldn’t believe the number of folks who insist up and down that they don’t even notice it, and even if they did hear it they find it comforting, and anyone who thinks it’s too loud or says something like “it hurts my ears” or “I have to reschedule meetings because of the noise” is either lying, a too-sensitive snowflake, or anti-American and anti-freedom.
What is it about loud noise and explosions that gets right wing folks all riled up and defensive, accusing anyone who claims to experience anything that negative that could be the responsibility of the noise maker of being a liar?
We were hearing them all over the neighborhood into the wee hours of the morning. This will continue for weeks, the fucking fucks.
When I was 9-12(1969-1972), I was living in University City(near San Diego), right in the flight path of Miramar. Regular disruption by incredibly loud jet noise.
Bold and italics added by me for emphasis.
And this is where the Troll outs himself as a Troll. Well done.