My childlike adoration of fireworks is extreme. If you don’t at least like them you probably should be shipped off to the island where I’ve mentally put the people who don’t like chocolate.
Once in childhood, my mother punished me for something trivial by not letting me see that year’s fireworks display. I will occasionally remind her how cruel that was. I live two blocks from the ocean but there are no fireworks here, it seems wrong that you can’t just wander out to the sand and gaze upon a sky bouquet on the Fourth.
Last year I was feeling a bit sad and decided I was going to have an adventure. I would go to Marina Del Rey where they have the money for explosives. I would hop on a bus if need be. Now you have no idea how weird that last sentence is. I was going to get on an actual bus. In Los Angeles if you have a car you just don’t do the bus thing. We Angelinos tend to live in our cars. If you saw the inside of my car you would think I LITERALLY lived in my car. Experts say that my mess is a sign of immense creativity, if it’s a proportional relationship, I am a genius.
I had already done a three mile walk that day and my hip was acting wonky. At the very beginning of the walk a young man asked me to go make out with him. I took a pass on the pass, but I can’t lie it put a bounce in my step which is better than a limp. The bus was only going to get me a half mile into the three-mile journey. A foreign exchange student was also on her way to the festivities, we walked and talked the entire way and we reached the marina as the first blast were going off. I flung my tired body onto the grass to gaze upward and I was so happy to be in that spot at that time. Hip pain what hip pain?
Then I realized I had to get home.
Uber wanted 75 dollars and the bus was no longer running. By now my hip was starting to feel like it was popping off its own pyrotechnics. I decided to see if the pain would be assuaged by the healing properties of tacos. No luck. I hobbled across the street and miraculously a cab pulls right up to me. We do not have free range taxis in LA, you don’t hail a cab here you call one. (I had tried but couldn’t get thru) But then one appears? I wasn’t going to argue with the cab fairy. Elated I slip in and tell him where I am going. We are stopped at the light and the cab door opens and a group of guys start in on me that I have stolen the cab they called. There was too many of them, I crawled out almost in tears. Now if one of these guys had said “if you make out with me I’ll give you a ride,” Would I? I don’t know. Have you had hip pain?
This story has a happy all be it embarrassing ending, I called my mom. I’d like to say she lives close to me but she really doesn’t. I will never again remind her of that time she didn’t let me see fireworks.
