Amateur fireworks displays are stupid

Perhaps you’ve heard that the use of fireworks is on the rise in our country.

For a variety of reasons, some related to the pandemic and some related to the civil rights protests, the use of firework has increased exponentially over the past couple months. Elysha and I have heard fireworks going off late into the night.

I wanted to offer my opinion of fireworks:

In the hands of professionals, a fireworks display can be extraordinary. The fireworks show over Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom might have been one of the best things I have ever seen. Elysha and I loved it so much that we saw it twice during our week at Disney last year.

In the hands of amateurs, fireworks are stupid.

I simply cannot understand how anyone finds pleasure in lighting up inferior fireworks in some half-assed display of explosives. After watching fireworks explode overhead on the Fourth of July or Memorial Day, how can some minor explosion in the street or the backyard bring anyone joy? I have witnessed many amateur fireworks displays during my life. I have watched bottle rockets launched into the sky. I’ve witnessed the explosions of various fireworks in parking lots and backyards. I’ve even watched the more expensive variety of amateur fireworks fire off for five minutes or more.

Every time I think:

This is stupid.

Many times, I also think:

This is dangerous.

Fire departments around the country are reporting an exponential rise in backyard and house fires related to fireworks. Hospitals are reporting increases in injuries related to fireworks, both by the people setting them off as well as innocent bystanders who are struck by fireworks fired off by morons.

There are fewer hands, fingers, and eyes in America today because of the sudden increase in firework use.

The timing of these fireworks displays also sucks. Often exploding late into the night, these explosions are terrible for dogs, sleeping babies, veterans suffering from PTSD, and essential workers in need of sleep before returning to the hospital, nursing home, grocery store, firehouse, and the like.

If you’re going set off fireworks, why are you doing so after midnight?

But it’s not the dangers associated with fireworks or their terrible timing that makes me hate them so much. It’s the disparity between a professional fireworks display and your backyard fireworks show. The difference between the two is so vast that it makes no sense to me why anyone would bother setting off amateur fireworks displays.

It’s like going to France to eat in one of the finest French restaurants then asking your toddler to reproduce the dish at home.

It’s like watching world-class trapeze artists perform under a circus tent then watching your teenager swing from her pull-up bar in the kitchen.

It’s like watching an Oscar award winning movie then being subjected to someone’s vacation video on their phone.

There is no comparison.

Congratulations, fireworks fans. You lit a fuse and made something go boom. You sent colorful sparks soaring nine feet into the air for 152 seconds. You launched a little something 43 feet into the sky, where is made a loud pop and produced red sparks.

I’ll never understand it.

I realize that the coronavirus may result in the cancellation of many professionally produced fireworks displays this summer, but replacing those shows with some sad excuse for a fireworks display at 2:00 in the morning on a Thursday night makes no sense to me.

Good things, people, are worth the wait.

And while I’m not suggesting that the recording of a fireworks display is any better than the sad, little displays being set off by amateurs, here is the fireworks display from the Magic Kingdom, in case you’ve never seen it and were curious.

This video is nothing compared to the real thing, of course.

Just like the sad, little fireworks being set off throughout the country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bN5b11H4_s