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Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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2:06 p.m. - 2003-07-05
Sometimes it's really fun being psychic. Yesterday we had several choices of where to catch some fireworks. I looked at the list in the paper and flashed on us being at one specific place. I saw us sitting on the tailgate of the Bronco watching the light show in my old hometown. We were parked in the parking lot of the burnt down bowling alley. The bowling alley had been almost dead center downtown and the parking lot is perfectly situated to watch fireworks shot off from the island in the mill pond. Good deal. Choice made. Now the thing about all this is Hometown has grown exponentially in the last decade. Seriously, an overwhelming population explosion made up entirely of city folk who moved to "the country". On the whole, city folk are TERRIFIED of "the country" and rarely explore. Hometown is the first place they come to when they leave the Thruway, so that is where they settle. They don't even try the side roads in their new wilderness settlement, bears might eat them or us inbred hicks might attack them, make them squeal like pigs and then shoot them. So the main drag through town turns into an 8 mile long bumper-to-bumper parking lot on the weekends as the city folk attempt to get themselves to and from the Shoprite without being set upon by wild animals or becoming so hopelessly lost they never find civilization again and die a dog's death of protracted dehydration/starvation because there's nary a McDonald's or Starbucks to be found. God forbid they enter independent food establishments! Ma's Diner would be CRAWLING with e-coli and (eeeek!) locals. The safety in numbers herding instinct of the city people was a potential difficulty. As was their deplorable driving skills and absolute lack of manners. Taking turns is a foreign concept to city people and quite often where two roads come together without a traffic light you'll find a stalled snarl of traffic because the two lead cars will not yield to the other, nor will the subsequent cars when (if) they get their turn. So instead of zippering together neatly with a car from each road going into the traffic flow in a turn and turn again fashion, you get these clusterfucks. Happens so frequently now that I've even given up getting angry. I inch along until I reach a turn onto one of the secret jungle paths known only to us locals and zoom away laughing over the whole thing. Delighting in that I will be home again before those dopes from Queens have budged more than a quarter mile. But the feeling things would go my way was persistent and around 8:30 we threw a cooler of Cokes and juice boxes into the back of the Bronco and took off toward Hometown. Sure enough before we even crossed the village line the city people had staked their claims. Cars were slewed off the road every whichaway and the blare of a thousand different car stereos tuned to a hundred different stations wasn't quite loud enough to drown the nasal whining and bullyragging of the occupants. "Maaaaaa! I gotta go make!" (translation: Mom, I need to use the toilet) "Yo! Dipshit! Can'tcha see I'm parked here? Whodoya think you are anyways? The fuggin POPE?" Ah yes, the lilting cadences of the Cityus Stupidius. The formerly rare breed up here, which unfortunately has become common. A noxious pest which we can do nothing about except pray for their self-induced extinction from a total lack of brains and the fighting between the over-aggressive males of the species who make the head butting Big Horn sheep look like peaceniks. We threaded our way through the throng into the village proper. More whining and bellowing, plus there were some scuffles over fender benders and turf encroachment. The men standing nose-to-nose snarling. The women flipping each other off and screaming epithets, and the kids circling around the combatants yelling, "Go get 'em Dad!" and throwing rocks. Fun for the whole family. Mike shot me a look and I serenely told him to keep rolling. We WERE going to get a parking space at the bowling alley and it would be fine. And we did. And it was. Don't EVER doubt the Psychic Mom. We had a perfect view of the fireworks. They were practically bursting over our heads. Wolf screamed with delight and pretend fright. We taller ones were just as entranced, coming out of our fireworks bliss just long enough to share a laugh about how the aluminum "bangers" set off the car alarms. "BOOM!" and the cacophony of beeps, sirens, and whoops was almost as loud as the fireworks themselves. To make this all the more absurd the owners of the shrieking cars were IN them! This one doofus nearby reset his alarm a dozen times! Why not just turn the thing off? Was his car in danger of being stolen right out from under his butt? This guy wasn't trying out for Quiz Bowl any time soon, that's for sure. Yeah, getting back out of town was an adventure, but once we cleared the main traffic jam my insider's knowledge of the by-ways got us rolling in no time. We stopped for cones on the way home and Wolf in his Old Navy flag t-shirt was the quintessential American kid. A chocolate smeared face, sprinkles stuck to his nose, a cone in one hand and a sparkler in the other, my boy seemed to me the spirit of 4th of July. Happy Birthday America. ~LA
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