Fourth of July post

Now you could say you love the fourth of July, but at this point in my life, it seems like a pointless ritual that we perform every year. "People died to colonize this country," "Cool let's set some things on fire to celebrate." It just seems to get so stale after a while. If I'm spending money to buy things to set on fire, it has to be FUN at the very least.

That's not even the end of it. Sometimes these fireworks are super dangerous. Apparently there's like 8 deaths every single year because of fireworks. What the actual heck people, stop being so stupid. There's also like those various banned fireworks that are super cool but become illegal after being out for like 2 hours. Things like those Chinese floating lanterns that look super cool. And bottle rockets. Apparently these things are super dangerous because they can fly in pretty much any direction, but if you're not being stupid about it, you're not going to get hit by a bottle rocket. Although really can you expect people to be smart about it? There's always a choice in fireworks. You can launch them safely, or you can launch them the fun way. That is unless launching them safely is the fun way. The key to happiness is lowered expectations.
But I have to get to the point now. If I don't somebody will find this post and hiss in disgust when it just trails off into oblivion.

A few years ago, I think it was like 2014, my sister lived with us still. My sister also has some leg problems. That happened a long time ago but the gist of it is that she had to have her Achilles tendon stretched. The takeaway from this is that she can't run very well. That can cause some severe issues if you're ever in a dangerous situation.

Now it's the fourth of July. We never get a huge amount of stuff, but it was a decent amount. Imagine a decent amount of fireworks. Now imagine less than that. That is our decent amount of fireworks. Among these particular explosion things, there was one called Halley's comet. This thing was awesome. We didn't see what it did beforehand, and we never found it again, but it was great. Maybe we haven't found it again because it's illegal now or something.

Anyway. We set that sucker in the middle of our backyard, and my sister lit it. It send up a flame that spun in a really tight spiral and it was great. If you want to know what it looks like, it was almost like if butterscotch could fly and was also on fire. If you can imagine that I'll give you a high-five. Now think of that flaming and flying butterscotch, and imagine it coming directly at your face at like 30 miles per hour.

Turns out that this particular firework likes to shoot out the side rather than up sometimes. So I'm sitting off to the side a bit, and suddenly a huge spiral of fire shoots directly in my general direction. My sister was standing not quite in it's path, but when she saw it coming she BOOKED IT out of there. She can't run well, but she was GONE. Afterwards she was super freaked out and said, "I could have died!" She had stared death in the face. And death is shaped like a spiral of flaming butterscotch that flies directly at your face.