"Those Chinese Have Done It Again"

Back in high school, I ran into a friend of mine as the 4th of July fireworks were coming to an end.

"Those Chinese have done it again!" he exclaimed, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Every 4th of July, as I watch the fireworks, I'm reminded of that. It made me laugh. It's a funny statement, but it's also true. The Chinese invented fireworks. And for all I know, most of the fireworks we see every year are probably manufactured in China. I say that with absolutely no knowledge of where fireworks are manufactured.

But there is something about fireworks that still mystifies for me. Colored sparks in the sky, burning bright, and then they're gone. Watching them disintegrate into smoke. Watching that smoke hang in the air, and slowly drift in the wind until it disappears. Better yet, before it disappears, another firework goes off and my attention is stolen away from the smoke.

I've become jaded about a great many things. Cynicism often gets the best of me. And I'll be honest, last night when my wife wanted to go up to our roof to see the fireworks going off 360 degrees around us, all across Chicagoland, there was hesitancy in my mind.

Who cares. Seen it. It's just sparks. And on and on and on.

But I went to the roof. And the Chinese did it again. The fireworks took me back to being a kid. The first time I saw the fireworks, I was terrified. I thought of how we couldn't leave, because I was the youngest and it would have ruined it for my siblings. So I buried my head in my mom's lap, covered my ears, and probably cried until they ended, every once in a while working up the courage to look at the green explosions in the sky.

I thought about the next year, going with my younger cousin. This time I was the older kid to someone, and I watched him melt in fear and hysterics, while I watched every firework, guessing which color would come next.

Last night, it sunk in that my favorite thing about the fireworks is the distance between the sight and the sound. Every year, we witness this simple spectacle, and it's scientific law in action. I do not know how fireworks work. Some combination of chemicals add color. Gunpowder makes them blow up. I don't know. But I know that light moves faster than sound. And you can see the canister reach its peak in the sky, start to sink a little, then there's a flash of light. Moments after you see the colors begin to separate from each other, you hear the boom.

I don't know why, but it's really comforting to me. It's reassuring. There are laws of nature. And the boom will always come.

Fireworks have been around since the 7th century. People have been watching them light up the night sky for 1400 years. How many billions of people have stood under the darkness and watched in awe as the darkness gave way to the colors? How many different occasions have been celebrated? Revolutions. New years. Ends of wars. Baseball games.

It's a pretty amazing thing that fireworks are a constant. There aren't many constants across the world. Christmas has all kinds of different traditions from country to country. Rites of passage from childhood to adulthood differ from culture to culture, religion to religion, and place to place. Within a culture, things evolve over time.

The biggest hit song 200 years ago sounds absolutely nothing like the hit songs of today. But then, as now, some 4-year old boy buried his head in his mom's lap because he was terrified of the fireworks. Maybe he was okay with the flash, but scared of the boom. I don't know. But I do know that the boom always comes. And that's pretty cool.