We got to talk about this birthday party of yours, America.
July 4th, as holidays go, is fine. That being said: I think at 250 years old it’s high time for America to outgrow throwing itself the same party every year. I am no longer sure how I feel about celebrating anything by giving the sensory impression that we are taking heavy enemy fire. Rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air and all that other outdated horsecrap is a lot less funny when a firework goes off when you’re standing on the train platform and everyone thinks, “Is this it? Is it time to take shelter? Is it some kid with a black cat? If you heard the shot, it didn’t hit you, right?”
The risk of injuring oneself from fireworks would seem to take some of the excitement and joy out of the whole thing. Interspersed with all of the exploding around July 4th is a lot of sirens and some very crowded emergency rooms.
All right, I’m going to confess that this is the part that makes me maddest. Fireworks are inhumane. A decent country should not celebrate its birthday with lavish and prolonged acts of animal cruelty. The number of tranquilizers I had to pour into my friend Leia so she could survive the July 4th weekend with anything approaching sanity — even by the standards of a Staffy — is a dose that should give anybody pause. Hunter Thompson wouldn’t take this many drugs passing a couple weeks in Vegas.
The degree of misery that we visit on beloved friends who do not have the slightest idea what is going on, what America is, and why we celebrate its birthday by being mean to them is beyond even my ability to describe in metaphor. I understand that this is a nation that gives annual thanks for all of the blessings visited upon us by engaging in the greatest ritual animal slaughter in the history of the world (a slaughter in which I enthusiastically and greedily participate, mind you, this is not some sort of PETA screed), but doing something entirely optional that makes dogs beyond miserable is increasingly something I find unconscionable.
I should not have to coax my trembling bestie out from under the bed with cookies after a holiday weekend so we can go to the park. This is — there is no other expression for it — not OK. I don’t want to be shrill at people who are setting off fireworks over their lack of safety or sense. Those frailties are their business. But I do want to go to them with video footage of cowering pets and say, “I just want you to know, this is what your ‘harmless fun’ is doing to my friend.”
This being America, of course, I am pretty confident most of them wouldn’t care. But we do what we can.
Happy birthday, America.
Grow up.
Alan Brouilette
Forest Park