Flashing and rumbling, fireworks are Viagra in a bottle (rocket). Men may as well mainline testosterone.
In fact, they've become pretty essential to American life. Who wants to go out on date number two if number one was, "fine, but no fireworks"?
I'm a huge fan. When else can every man in America be convinced to venture into the great outdoors and spend some time gazing up at the stars with women?
The only other occasion I can come up with is the launch of a space shuttle, but it's the same sort of rockety, explosive spectacle, so no dice there.
Give me a couple of pretty sparklers to wave around and all the trappings of tradition (think streamers, families on blankets, wieners) and I'm as happy as a lark. But it seems like men are more concerned with oomph.
The bigger the blast and the higher the trajectory, the more chest-thumpin' good-times grunting they'll do.
As a youngster, my father once stockpiled 25 pounds of fireworks underneath the family couch. Not sure exactly what he was planning there, but it did not flip grandma's skirt up.
When I was a little girl, I got to light the fuse on the Roman candles. My dad and brothers hyped it up so much that when a few sparks finally sputtered into the night sky it was kind of anti-climactic.
It was then they informed me you couldn't buy the "big daddy" fireworks in Florida anymore. The "year of the ban" seemed to virtually castrate the men of my home state.
