You'll Shoot Your Eye Out

Today is a Utah State holiday-- Pioneer Day, which celebrates Utah's pioneer heritage. What this really means is that everyone in Utah does lots of barbequeing, recreation activities, and can legally shoot off fireworks.

Now, fireworks that are allowed in Utah are extremely wimpy (since we have high risk for fires in the nice, dry deserty areas). This means that lots of people (including me) like to make a pilgrimage to Wyoming, where practically every firework known to man is legal.

So we went to my brother's tonight to do the ritual illegal fireworks festivities. We decided that "Electric Eels" are pretty cool for such a small little thing, and that the "Firecracker Fountain" is probably the longest running fountain we've ever seen. The kids had a blast dropping water firecrackers into a bucket and getting splashed by the resulting explosions; the adults had fun shooting off bottle rockets and the like.

At one point, my brother Dusty pulled out his stash of Roman Candles, and handed them out to all the kids. He had one left, so he asked Ron if he wanted to light one. Ron hadn't been doing anything besides watching up to this point, so he said, "Sure."

Well, because the wind was blowing a bit, we were lighting off the Roman Candles with one of those firey sparklers. Ron put his candle into the flame, and the sucker went off, right in Dusty's face.

Holy crap!

Thankfully, all that happened was a pair of singed eyebrows out of that incident. Ron felt stupid beyond all belief, because he wasn't pointing it away from people when he lit it... Dusty sat looking a bit shocked for a couple minutes, and then got up and started lighting more fireworks again.

Boys.

Ron apologized to Dusty for trying to blow him up. He just laughed about it. But Ron's decided that he's better off being just a spectator for any future fireworks activities!