Text 2923, 80 rader
Skriven 2005-10-27 08:13:20 av Greg Sears (3:633/104)
Ärende: B O O
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                 HAVE FUN, JUST DON'T BLOW UP MY HOUSE


I've never been such a big fan of fireworks. Perhaps I just lack the
physical courage that it takes to handle materials that could explode
without giving sufficient notice, but 10 and two seem to be about the
right number of fingers and eyes for a person to have and I've grown
attached to them anyway.

Making things blow up and deafening unsuspecting passers-by may be
great fun to some people, but I've never gotten the bang out of it
that some folks do. Call me a nervous granny trapped in a roguishly
good-looking man's body, but home ownership has really brought out the
Delusional Paranoid in me and Halloween is peak season for us DPs.

For a week on both sides of Halloween I round the corner on my way
home expecting to see a smoldering ruin where my entire family's net
worth used to stand. All I see when I look around my wood frame shoe
box is kindling for some rocket launching gang-banger wanna-be with
something to prove. I lit the place ablaze once myself before I
realized the previous owner had installed a wooden fireplace, so I
know it catches fire quite readily.

I wasn't always such a shrinking violet at Halloween. When I was about
seven Ricky Taylor, a dangerously hyperactive kid of whom I sensed my
parents faintly disapproved, got his sweaty little palms on some fire
crackers. Being curious kids we lit a few and tossed them at each
other until we were both incapacitated by hysterical laughter and
ringing deafness. Then Ricky thought it would be cool to let some fire
crackers blow up in our hands, so we took turns clenching child-sized
explosives in our fists and lighting them. We did that right up until
our hands could no longer operate the matches due to spreading
numbness and creeping paralysis.

Come to think of it my mom might have been right about Ricky Taylor.

As prepubescently asinine as we were, high school brought with it
previously unimaginable levels of stupidity. Instead of merely
deafening one person at a time with a piddily little fire cracker, as
teens we found dozens of people could be rendered senseless simply by
tossing a cherry bomb in the smoking area's garbage bin. Pretty soon,
though, that wasn't enough of a bang. But even as you are firing roman
candles through a car window at people in the students' parking lot,
you know these over the counter fireworks are really just kid's stuff
- barely powerful enough to blow off a limb.

As Campbell River is largely dependent on primary resource extraction
for its livelihood, most kids have access to real explosives. If your
dad works for the local mine chances are your shed will contain a
lunchbox-sized piece of plastic explosive or at least a stick of
dynamite. In this particular case, however, a kid who had spent the
summer cleaning fish on a seiner came to school with a seal bomb.
Since seal bombs are meant to be detonated under water no one was the
slightest bit surprised when a washroom in the shop building was blown
to smithereens. When I got a look at the damage it seemed as though
even the smithereens had been blown up.

That was easily the biggest explosion ever at my high school. But
that's only because the oxyacetylene tanks were kept pad-locked,
otherwise the entire shop complex would have gone up at some point I'm
sure. Kids just seem to have a natural innate sense of what is right
and wrong; it's the only explanation I can come up with for the total
lack of fatalities. On the other hand maybe it was just a lack of
military training.

So, if you want to know where I am for the next few days, I'll be the
guy standing in the front yard in the pouring rain with a garden hose.


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