The Dumbest Fireworks Story You'll Ever Read

This is the true tale of the most gloriously stupid night of fireworks in the history of South Carolina. Before I go any further with this story I need to draw your attention to a couple of things:

1. No alcohol or drugs were consumed during the planning or execution of this event.  What you’re reading is 100% organic stupidity.
2. I neither recommend nor condone these actions.
3. Happy Independence Day to you all.

Home from my first year of college, my childhood pal Lee and I decided to have one last fling with things that go boom.  We pooled $600 for fireworks, built a raft, and soaked the pile of goodies with gasoline.  (That sentence alone made Al Gore cry.)

We set the raft adrift and goofed around with our friends while dusk settled into night.  The raft drifted to the middle of the pond.  Lee and I fired bottle rockets one by one at the raft, but bottle rockets are designed only to go in the general direction of “up.” Minutes passed with neither of us scoring a bull’s-eye, so the assembled ten or so guests joined in and fired at the raft, too.

No luck.  We broke out the Roman candles, and though their fireballs traveled with much greater precision the raft now was beyond their range.

“We’re going to have to swim out there and light it,” I said.  We swam close to the gas-soaked raft, each of us holding a book of matches over our heads.  One by one we flicked the matches toward the raft, but they went out mid-air or fell short, hissing quickly to death in the darkened water.

And then one of us scored a hit.

The gasoline whooshed and shot flames twenty feet into the air, and the raft fired the first retaliatory bottle rockets straight at us.  “Dive!” I screamed, and then I did.  Beneath the water’s surface the little rockets whizzed past, exploding somewhere beneath me.  I swam deeper, trying to get out of range, the surface chaos a dull roar of screams, whistles, and explosions. 

I turned my eyes toward the surface.  Above the water it was daylight now, but a multicolored, flashing daylight.  From my vantage point beneath the lake the whole thing was a muted light show, watery blobs of color pulsing and colliding.

I surfaced in a war zone.  The bangs and squeals were deafening. Fireballs and missiles flew in every direction.  On shore Lee's father danced in the tall brush, silhouetted against the flames he was stomping out.  Bricks of firecrackers exploded, pitching bright, sparkling fountains off of the raft.  On shore people screamed, but from the middle of the pond I couldn’t differentiate between joy and terror. 

The whole thing may have taken five minutes.  When the last of the fireworks fizzled out and all that remained was the quietly burning raft I realized that I’d lost track of my buddy somewhere in the lake.  “Lee!” I screamed.

“What?” he said, not three feet from me.

We looked at each other and laughed, both of us a little stunned by what we unleashed.  Adulthood lay before us, but for now we were in the pond where we’d spent our summers swimming and fishing since we were middle schoolers.  We swam back to shore together, through the drifting rockets and wads of burned paper, the detritus of a shared childhood that burned brightly but now lay spent everywhere but in our memories.  And that was fine, fine.