Fireworks In Kansas Are Twenty Six Percent More Fun

A fact which I proved using the scientific method.

So, as we have previously established, I have spent several summers in Kansas, where there are apparently no laws and anarchy rules. At least when it comes to fireworks.

I live in California, where, if you so much as snap your fingers too loud on the 4th of July, a SWAT team will materialize and stab you in the face until you are no longer a fire hazard. The laws we have on fireworks are more strict than a pile of nuns. An open flame from the summer solstice to the fall equinox is treated like the Devourer of Worlds. Basically, I didn't even realize that you could blow things up in a socially acceptable manner on Independence day until I went to Kansas, and the introduction to destruction they gave me was heart warming.

Well, to be more accurate, it was chest warming, because my shirt was on fire, but I'm getting to that.

The first summer I was in Kansas, it was too dry on the fourth to do much more than throw those dinky little poppers that crack when they hit the ground. It was depressing, especially since the family I was with had talked about the insanity that was going to happen and had shown me their "secret stash" of home made fireworks (which looked like a secret munitions dump, but I was too stupid to be worried). That night, though, a magnificent summer storm happened. It was like the sky itself objected to the lack of lights and loud noises and decided to oblige us. I have some of those lighting strikes burned in to my retina to this day, because they were so ridiculously bright, close, and beautiful. And then it poured a hot rain (another unheard of thing where I come from) for three hours, slightly flooding the yard.

I woke up on the fifth to an explosion. Not a big one, but big enough to jerk me out of a dream where I was chasing sheep and make me fall out of bed.

It was a bunk bed, and I was in the top bunk, so I wasn't going to back to sleep any time soon. I headed outside to see what had happened.

The sky was clear blue, puddles were on the ground, and the entire family of crazies were lighting things and throwing them at each other.

They had taken apart several strings of crackers, carefully separating the fuses and cutting them, so instead of a lot of bangs at once, they would light a single one and throw it.

There was no way to tell how long a fuse would burn before it went off. I had several go off in my hand less than a second after I lit it, which is why I'm typing this blog with only eight fingers, but there were a few that burned for a good five seconds after I had thrown them before going off.

There was relatively little risk when it came to getting hit with one, since most of the time they would either go off in the air before they reached you or bounce harmlessly off you and go off on the ground.

But I was good at timing. Even with a fuse that had exactly zero way to tell how long it would last, I managed to blow them up when they were close enough to feel fairly consistently.

This, naturally, annoyed my good friend.

They kept them in a bucket. You would grab a handful for ammunition, and when you ran out a cease fire was called and everybody went and got more.

I get Joey one too many times, and he grabs the bucket and tosses a match inside. I started running. He waited until they began going off, and threw them all at me.

It would have made an excellent slow motion scene, if my life was a movie. Stepping high as I sprinted away from him, the air itself exploding around me, I laughed and laughed...

When darkness fell, we began shooting off the big stuff. We shredded the sky with lights and sounds, and it was glorious. There was no patriotism. It was just the joy of stimulation.

Let me Tell You About The Time I Drove a Motorcycle Into an Electric Fence

Okay, so I know the title of the blog is plausible but (almost) entirblah blah blah etcetera hurf durf boof, so in order to make this story sound ever so slightly more believable, let me clarify a few things.

The electric fence was off.
It was a very small motorcycle.
I didn't actually die.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get to the legitimately fun stuff.

In Kansas, you are not a real person until you have done several phenomenally stupid things and have enough drunken tales to entertain a small nation. As you can probably tell, I am considered a real person in Kansas. However, I was not always this way. I used to be considered a bit of a bore, believe it or not. The moment I would open my mouth in order to tell somebody about how Popeye the Sailor Man's penchant for spinach was actually due to a missed decimal place in a study about the iron content of said vegetable (which is a true story, by the way) I would get pummeled until I stopped talking.

I'm a pretty stubborn talker, so these beatings would often last for five minutes or so, until I had finished my "fun fact."

Anyway, in an effort to either make me more interesting or kill me (I still have no idea which it was) I was taken out to the shop one day by a fellow four years younger than me and shown his "dirt bike." You may have noticed that I put quotation marks around the term "dirt bike." This is because what he was showing me was, in fact, garbage piled into the rough shape of a two wheeled deathtrap conveyance.

Let me clarify. Instead of a carburetor, this thing had a Folgers coffee can bolted to the frame. The throttle, as I would find out shortly, had two speeds (affectionately and accurately called "stop" and "go") and nothing the rider did would affect which speed the bike would decide to go at any given moment. It did have shocks, but they didn't work. The only way you wouldn't end up dead after sitting on that bike was through an act of God.

I wanted to ride it so bad. I would give anything. I would molest a moose if that is what it would take to get me on that bike and riding.

I didn't have to molest any moose. The kid looked me in the eye and said "want to drive it around?"

I said yes.

He started the thing for me (which involved kicking it in twelve very specific places, turning the handlebars at a difficult angle, and twisting my nipple) and I climbed on. He climbed on behind me, to my surprise, but before I could object, the thing decided it was time to go.

We missed the door by a good three feet, but that was okay, because the wall was pretty thin and easily repaired. I wrestled the thing out onto a nice straight road and punched it. Naturally, punching it didn't do anything, but eventually the planets aligned and the bike picked up some speed. It couldn't have been more than thirty five miles an hour or so, but it felt like we were blasting along at twelve thousand. I could hear the kid behind me shouting directions in my ear, and I tried to follow them as best as I could, but it was like trying to control a dinosaur; loud, terrifying, and chances are we would both be dead in moments.

Eventually, I guided it onto a track that may or may not have been meant for dirt bikes. I did a few laps, got a decent three inches of air, and decided I wanted to explore the countryside for a bit. Or maybe the bike decided that. I can't really remember anymore. What I do remember is hearing the words "You know there's a fence there, right?" from somewhere far behind me. I twisted around and the idiot kid had jumped off the back of the bike and was standing thirty feet back. I twisted forward and saw nothing but open prairie, just before I was clothes lined off the bike and into the dirt by a thin wire which should have sent several thousand volts of electricity through me but didn't, because, somehow, it was off.

The bike roared triumphantly and galloped off into the sunset. I got up, brushed myself off, and the very next time a party happened, I got pummeled significantly less.