The Crackpot: Sparklers!

Sparklers!

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Break out the sparklers -- it's the Fourth of July!

Back in the olden-days of my youth, my siblings and I seldom had the opportunity to shoot off real firecrackers. But on most every Fourth of July, we did have the thrill of lighting off sparklers.

You know, they terrified me at first. I feared those cascading sparkles would burn as they rained down upon my hand. But to my utter amazement, they didn't burn -- they tickled!

Waving a sparkler around and watching it make light trails in the night sky provided great entertainment for a bunch of naïve country kids who'd never seen a BIG fireworks show.

We'd draw pictures and write messages with our wands of light on an invisible blackboard and giggle at the light trails they left on the summer-night's sky.

To us, "BIG FIREWORKS" meant lighting off Grandpa Miller's railroad flares. Grandpa (who worked 55 years for the New York Central Railroad) always brought us a fresh supply every summer. Dad would plant a line of flares down the driveway stone, and we'd watch red flames spew forth until they fluttered to an end.

Once in a great, great while, Dad would shoot off a Roman candle. We'd cheer and holler as the colored flame-balls rose up, over the cornfield and disappeared into the inky night.

Oh, after we grew up some and attended real fireworks displays, our own homemade celebrations seemed pretty anemic by comparison. But you know what? I have trouble recalling any one of those huge fireworks shows.

Only the homemade ones stand out in my memory -- especially the time I grabbed the wrong end of a spent sparkler and carried the scar with me for the rest of the summer. (Memories with painful lessons do have a way of sticking with a person, no?)

I have managed to survive some mighty painful instruction in arriving at this point in life, but then, when you grab the end that's on fire, what can a body expect?!

Some of my scars do still hurt a bit -- and no doubt they'll remain tender for some time to come. But that doesn't mean I'm giving up on fireworks just because a few of them have backfired on me.

And of all the glittery, booming, crackling joy that fireworks bring, I have to say that old-fashioned sparklers give me the most delight.

They remind me that life can still burst with surprises, and, in spite of the risks involved, the thrill of holding one outweighs all the pain that appears to be raining down.

I want to experience that "tickle" once more and have life surprise me all over again.

Have a happy Fourth of July -- and please don't blow off any fingers!

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