# 16 ..

++ 16. My parents never let me buy fireworks while i was growing up.
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i'm not sure if they just didn't trust us with flammable shooting gunpowder. no wait, i'm pretty sure thats what it was. man, if they only knew the flammable things we flamed while growing up. no wait, they probably did. parents just always seem to know that stuff. even if they weren't there and they have no proof, they just know. so yeah, our parents never let us but fireworks while we were growing up, luckily however most of the other kids parents let them buy fireworks or rather they would buy fireworks for their kids and everyone in the neighborhood got to mooch off them and watch. and we're not talking smokebombs or bottle rockets or blackcats. it was more well actually i don't even know what any of them were called. oh, roman candles. but those might as well be a bottle rocket you hold in your hand and point at someone and pretend you are harry potter. hm, yeah i don't know what any of the fireworks were called. i suppose i could just throw out any name and most likely its a firework.
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i remember mr. insani (in-san-ee) bought a whole bunch of fireworks one time and he had them all in a paper bag. there was probably $50 worth and he was lighting them all off one at a time. well he lit one or two and they went off and we all said, 'yay'. then he lit one and the bottle fell over and it shot at all of us sitting on side yard which was funny to see 8 little 10 year olds scrambling for their lives, trying to dodge this whatever it was coming at us full speed. it was like the running of the bulls, except that none of us were wearing white with red scarves and we weren't in pampalona and we weren't going down narrow streets and they weren't bulls. but it was pretty close. so all the little kids run and dive and dive and run and the firework misses all of us, but it jumps right into the bag of unlit fireworks. all the fireworks lite and ka-whamo, instant fireworks show. i've never seen so many go off at one time before, well except for when i go to real fireworks shows. when they shoot off real fireworks.
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blaine. he lived up the corner from us when we were growing up. he was a big guy. late 20's. early 30's. (which was old at the time. but crap. i'm almost late 20's now.) he gave a us a real big firework once. he hucked it into the ground so it would stand up. it wouldn't fit in the mouth of the bottle we had. we lit it. it didn't budge. we thought it was a dud. long delay turns out. boom! its hard to duck or hit the ground very fast when you are two steps away from a big explosion shooting off green and blue gunpowder at you. but you'd be surprised at how fast you react when green and blue sparks of gunpowder are flying at you. ++