Sparklers

It all boils down to sparklers

I can easily reflect on the thrill a box of those beauties would bring to my boyish heart.

Oh and then, later, when they came up with different colors of sparklers? Oh lord, did I believe that heaven was just this side of Now. Of course I discovered through experience that the colored ones didn't last nearly as long as the tried-and-true trusty silver sparklers. I'd have that wand burning just microns from my face totally enthralled by its magic. My mom warned me countless times about me courting a lifetime of blindness.  I didn’t heed her caution, those warnings fell on the growing pile of other cautions; poking an eye out, breaking my neck, all of that.  She also ended every warning with a disclaimer for comfort.  Don’t be coming to her crying when her prediction came true.  It was so common that her voice would drift into the din of back ground noise of childhood.  I learned to stop listening.  I wasn't dissuaded in the least by any promise of maiming.  I was at the age before doubt, so then invincible.  I was impervious to consequence of projected dire possibilities.  Perhaps the  only warning I really paid attention to was the one from my dad about not picking the lit sparkler up after throwing them into the air.  At first of course, I didn’t agree with that policy.  I figured it would be wasteful to leave a sparkler burning in the grass.  It was only when I tried to pick one up and grabbing the still hot burned end did I get the rational in why one doesn’t do that.  Sporting a burn while the thrill of fireworks was still going on was totally distracting.  It was that constant throbbing that kept my mind on the injury rather than throwing myself into the abandon of the firework display.

    OK then, don’t pick up burning sparklers because it was just impossible to tell which end was burned.

In good years, my parents pulled out the plugs and purchased tons of street fireworks. At those times I could have a sparkler in each hand at the same time making small circles or figure eights.  I was God of the night manifest by sparklers! I remember the abundance of smoke from all those fountains and fire spewing cones too.  Sometimes one of the neighbor dad’s would light a road flare and we’d have light to see where the fuses were on the next firework.  I considered them a bit of spoiler because part of the thrill in the process was the excitement in realizing that the fuse was lit.  Then you had to run like hell to get away from the shower of sparks.

Yet, even with all that fun, what was not so thrilling but always a necessity, was to go around the yard and the street front the next day and pick up all those spent fireworks.  The most difficult task was spotting the burned out sparklers hidden in the grass.  If missed, my dad would hit it while cutting the lawn and then there'd be lots of yelling and threats; who needs that right?  

   I used to collect the spent sparklers and scrape off the very last unburned bit of them into a special pile.  After cleaning up all that mess, I’d take my treasure of that silver magic and set it afire with my magnifying glass.  Hey, it was hard to do too because as any kid will tell you, sparklers take some real heat to get going.  Of course once they do, then it was pure excitement.

  Yeah, sparklers were my wonder for decades.  Whatever happened to make them seem ordinary?

I guess like so many of those other wonders from childhood, the luster was lost when the mystery faded; most likely, I just lost interest.