FIRST PERSON | Independence Day has always been a large celebration in my family. Usually, my parents would drive downtown, bring the lawn chairs and watch the fireworks. It involved very little planning because someone else handled the fireworks displays in downtown Indianapolis. There was only one year that we did not watch the fireworks downtown, and it proved to be a nightmare.
I was 12 and my parents decided that we would stay home for the Fourth of July. Our neighborhood was having a barbecue and several residents were planning their own fireworks displays. Indianapolis has always imposed restrictions on the July 4 fireworks, so everyone was trying to meet the rules while planning a fun event.
Since I was only 12, I was forbidden from playing or setting off any fireworks. Along with all of my friends, all I heard were horror stories of people getting hurt while playing with fireworks and their uncomfortable visits to the emergency room. We were barred from entering the neighbor's backyard that was storing all of the fireworks for the Independence Day barbecue in our neighborhood.
At the July 4 barbecue, we still were not able to enter the neighbor's backyard. Our only duties were to make sure that my friend's dog was not allowed to go outside because he was extremely scared of the fireworks. Andrew was supposed to lock his dog, Lucky, inside the house and my job was to remind him. Unfortunately, his mother kept forgetting things for the barbecue and continued sending both of us back to her house to get things.
On one of our trips to get more napkins for the neighborhood barbecue, Andrew noticed that no one was watching the backyard with all the fireworks. He managed to take some of the sparklers while I stood guard by the fence. Since everyone contributed to purchasing the fireworks for the entire neighborhood, we technically had a right to use them.
We went back to Andrew's house and set off the sparklers which proved to be less than spectacular. Andrew was convinced that the neighbor bought the cheapest fireworks he could find and stole the rest of the money. As we walked back to the barbecue, neither one of us noticed that the screen door to his house was open and that Lucky had escaped.
We only noticed the screen door an hour later. After Andrew's mother sent us back for more paper plates, we started a frantic search for Lucky without telling our parents. The golden retriever had a serious fear of loud sounds, and the fireworks had already started. We searched the entire neighborhood and were forced to eventually tell our parents who proceeded to ground us for the rest of July. The dog was missing for two days. Finally, I received a tearful phone call from Andrew's mom telling me that they found Lucky run over by a car about ten blocks away. It is still one of my worst Fourth of July memories.
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