I live 20 miles south of Philadelphia, home to Independence Hall, The Liberty Bell, the Rocky statue, and pretty much every other reason for why we celebrate the fourth of July. I also live two hours from Washington, DC, our nation’s Capital and host to one of the most exciting fireworks displays EVER. So where do you think I was on the eve of Independence Day?
My driveway.
That’s right. That is my family (minus a brother, who is currently boy scouting it up in Cape Cod, and my dad, who does not condone such frivolity as illegal firework displays), sitting on the driveway, surrounded by tiki torches, with blankets and lawnchairs, celebrating the fourth of July “Jones- style.”
Fireworks aren’t exactly legal where I live. Lucky for us, we live within a few short miles of THREE other states—so an unnamed family member literally drove three miles to another state and picked up some “groceries.” But don’t worry, she doesn’t buy the super dangerous ‘explode in the air’ kind—which is exactly what she was telling our neighbor as sparks started flying 30 feet in the air…
I love my family.
The rest of my holiday was pretty uneventful—my four year old sister walked around the house humming Tchaicovsky’s 1812 overture all day, complete with cannon blasts; my nine year old sister tried to convince me that her history teacher taught her that we celebrate the fourth of July because it’s the day we won a war; my six year old sister has officially shattered my hopes and dreams of being the family gymnast by proving that she can do the splits in any direction, including straight up in the air, (far surpassing my unique and advanced ability to do an unaided tripod headstand); and my dad was partially electrocuted. Three times.
While my family was enjoying the lights and sparkles out on the driveway, my dad was having a fireworks display of his own indoors. The recessed lighting in our family room has been broken for weeks now and my dad figured out that the real problem was the wiring in the light switch’s dimmer. So instead of calling an electrician, he went to Lowes, bought a replacement, and tried to fix it himself. I walked in to find him in a completely dark house (luckily he had turned the power off) with a reading lamp attached to his belt, wearing a latex glove and wiggling some tools around in a mess of copper and aluminum wires. I took over the job of electrician’s assistant and warily watched as my dad proceeded to shock himself repeatedly as he replaced the dimmer. After an agonizing struggle with some live wires, he finally finished, screwed in the outer switchplate, turned the power back on, and came back to the family room for the moment of truth…
It worked! My dad is a genius. He can fix anything. He started jumping around the room with both fists raised in the victory position—and in a moment of excitement and stupidity, I yelled “whooooo!!!!” and flipped the dimmer’s switch up and down (to flicker the lights… in the same motion that probably broke the silly thing in the first place)—resulting in my dad whipping around and giving me the ultimate glare of death. Oops.
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