Long one yesterday...this one's short and sweet.
The Fourth of July!
ZOMG! I love the 4th. In my family, it's damn near a more important holiday than Christmas or Thanksgiving. All our holidays are spent on Gantt Lake, but the 4th is the only one where the water is warm enough to swim and ski and innertube. I have spent every 4th of July at that lake cabin save for 3...once I was in Amsterdam (that was pretty fun actually), once I stayed in Huntsville (worst idea ever), and once I was at the Boy Scout National Jamboree.
And at that jamboree, you'll never guess who played a song right before the fireworks...wait, you did guess it?
Yes, it was Lee Greenwood and It. Was. Awesome.
The last 3 years I have purchased an ever increasing amount of fireworks and put on my own explosive extravaganza. Each show starts with the singing of the national anthem and then we play God Bless the U.S.A. I will continue to do this to the absolute end of my means...so all you Andalusians, just root for me getting more raises and the show will get better and better each year!
America! Fuck Yeah!
I was gonna stop there, but then again, brevity has never been my thing.
On July 4th, in the year of our Lord 1999, the 223rd year of the independence of our Republic, when gas was still a dollar and the internet still consisted of AOL "chatrooms" and AskJeeves, there was a boy. That boy was me. I was 16.
My parents threw a party to celebrate our forefathers' refusal to pay taxes. The teenagers threw a separate party on the fringes of their party, nicking beers here and there as we could, grabbing a bottle of harder spirits if the situation presented itself. Grills blazed and music blared all day and into the night. One stolen beer turned to fifty and our little party started to veer wildly out of control.
There were five of us hiding out behind the house, smoking cigarettes on the sly, when one girl started giggling uncontrollably and pointing to a large dirt pile that had been dredged from the lake the winter before. Behind it, but in plain view to us, was a bare ass a thrustin'...givin' it hell piston style...shining like a full moon (pun intended) under an orange street lamp. Things went downhill from there.
Eventually the party petered out (damn I'm punny) and it came time to get the dirt pile doinker back to his house. It was laaaate. like 3a.m. which by high school standards is clearly an "all nighter." I deposited him at his house and on the way home I had to go under a bridge. The law clearly says "idle speed only." However, at the time my boat was being a little uppity and didn't like to idle so I went slow, but not slow enough it would turn out.
My heart fell into the lake as I saw the terrifying blue lights behind me. Two minutes later I was giving Ranger Rick the Marine Police Officer permission to board my vessel. My parents are sticklers about littering and as such there was a plethora of empty alcoholic containers strewn on the deck of the pontoon. Ranger Rick had to literally kick cans out of the way as we went through all the safety features of the boat and did the whole "cop dance."
Keep in mind that I had been drinking...not only had I been drinking, I had been drinking ALL DAY, in the sun, and I WAS SIXTEEN! I was drunk...probably visibly. He finally addressed the pink elephant on the boat and I explained my parentals' policy on throwing cans. To which he responded, "how civic minded of them." Points RR for snarkiness!
He gets the coveted "coolest cop award" for letting me off. I should have been put under the jail, but in what we will call a Chrismakah miracle, I went on my way. I'm very careful about the Marine Police to this day...you only get one "get out of BUI" card in a lifetime.
Seriously, how embarrassing would it be to go to jail for a BUI?
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