Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-07-05 - 2:20 p.m.

Independence Day

Happy Fourth of July! Let's celebrate our independence by giving our children lighted sticks to run around with!

Fireworks are a gender issue. I don't care how old the male is, it's gonna be, "I dunno - let's light it and throw it and see what happens." Women are always, "The EYES! My God, keep it away from the EYES!"

My eleven-year-old came to prove my point as I wrote this: "Mom, can I have a bag to put all the boxes and burnt up fireworks in? It's all a mess out there." And we had a lovely gender-bonding discussion about the relative flammability of paper versus plastic bags.

But then, two of the older girls just came in begging for Scotch tape so they could tape two snakes together, light them and see what happened. So maybe I'm full of shit.

I'm inside because I planned this year poorly: the margaritas arrived at the party hours before I did. Make a note: get there before the margaritas. I mean, you're either on the margarita boat or you're not. If it left without you, you're sunk. At the moment I am about a quart of margarita shy of enjoying John Phillips Sousa, and a gallon shy of getting teary over Old Faithful, which pretty well puts me out of the party running for this year.

Then again, I'll be up and chipper four hours before the rest of these people will, and the remaining cherry bombs in the neighborhood won't make me whimper.

There is a bright side to arriving after the margaritas - you really can skip the potluck dish. I brought the stuff for three fancy salads, each of which involved a lot of chopping, and you know what happened to all that. I was shoveling it all into scant tupperware and leaning on the lids like three-week suitcases. We didn't need that stuff. If you've got margaritas, all you need are chips. Keep your zucchini and black-bean salad home. There are only two real margarita potluck assignments: you're bringing tequila or you're bringing chips. Anything else, and you better bring a boatload of Tupperware, because it's all going home with you. Incidentally, black bean salad is not one of those things that looks better at closing time.

I can still hear the Piccolo Petes from inside. Piccolo Petes. Who invented THOSE? There's no such thing as a Piccolo Polly. Women wouldn't make that noise. You could grab the back of a woman's thong and yank it up and wrap it around her hair like a Scrunchie and she wouldn't make that noise. Those things are evil. Halfway through, your brain decides "That isn't even noise, that's just an aural expression of agony," and you don't hear it anymore, you just feel it, like molten mercury injected into your eardrum. And I think one of the guests brought a case of them tonight. Along with the chips.

I suppose I'm just not good at holidays that revolve around drinking a lot and making as much noise as you can, which lets out of a lot of holidays. In fact, it leaves me pretty much stuck with Be Kind to Animals Week. And Lent. I can enjoy the hell out of Lent.

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