My Fourth Of July and How Rebecca Needs Insurance

     I've never been a very fearless child. I can't swim, ride a bike, or pop fireworks. That third one is sometimes a problem around this time of year. Now that I'm a teenager and not looked at as such a little kid, I can avoid fireworks with more ease. Fireworks just make me jumpy and give me heart attacks. To me they are just little red bad ideas. Most of the time parents teach their children not to play with fire, but on this particular summer night, they hand them the fire. But this isn't even normal fire. This fire is loud and pops everywhere and at everything.
   My family always has an annual Fourth of July party and this year my friend Rebecca tagged along with us. Besides multiple bug bites, everything was going well and we were having fun. Then my niece, Maria, pulls out packs of 100 count Black Cats. Black Cats are little firecrackers that you light in your hand then throw before they explode. I was a good sport and threw two but then decided to just sit down and hand them the fireworks instead. Maria has been doing them for years. I remember being much younger and her having all kinds of explosives in one pocket and a lighter in the other. She would always drag me along with her to set them off so I trusted her. Rebecca on the other hand has always lived in Corpus Christi, a city an hour away that has too much concrete and too many bans against this sort of thing. Needless to say, I was weary.
     As the night grew on Rebecca gained more and more confidence and eventually was competing with Maria. It was a game I used to play (and always lost at). It's like a game of chicken. The Black Cats have a long enough fuse so that when they are thrown they don't explode in the air and they do on the ground. What the players do is hold the lit firework in their hand then throw it at the last second so that it does explode in the air. Maria was in the lead and Rebecca kept gaining confidence and making me more and more nervous.
     Then Rebecca did what Maria and I kept warning her not to do. She held on too long. The firecracker went off in her hand. Becca stared in shock. Maria jumped. I screamed, flipped and freaked the hell out. I thought my friend had just blown her hand off!
     As I was trying to catch my breath and return my heart rate to a normal beat Rebecca came towards me.
     "Can I have another one?"


To check out Rebecca's blog,  ***click here***