It makes me completely nuts to hear fireworks going off around here, living as we do in a neighborhood whose entrances are all prominently marked “CAUTION: FIRE DANGER ZONE. FIRE DANGER TODAY IS !”

What are people thinking?!?!

It was only 15 years ago that hundreds of houses burned and a bunch of people died from a wildfire in the neighborhood started by idiots playing with fire. Not just “those other people” but people we actually know lost their houses, their houses’ contents, their lives as they knew them, everything.

It was only a few weeks ago that another big grass fire started in the exact same spot and bloomed into a three-alarm fire and 24 hours with helicopters hovering and fire crews monitoring.

Sure, in theory there are safe ways to play with firecrackers and all those other so-called “amateur” or “family fun” fireworks. I even know most of those safety tips, having misspent some of my youth in this sort of pursuit. I also know that even the safest people have accidents and make mistakes. I’m in that count, too. You have duds that land in the grass instead of going off in air, only to blow a shockingly long time later. You have those whistler things that for some reason crash into the trees or grasses while still lit instead of flying off into the sky. You have just about anything set to go off on a patch of pavement, only to see an unexpected puff of wind whisk it away into a patch of something flammable. Lots of things like this go wrong, and I’m talking about the people who are behaving prudently!

And then there are all the idiots who do stuff with fireworks that is just so darned stupid they deserve to get their fingers blown off or their eyeballs blown up, and unfortunately there are shockingly large numbers of people like that, too.

Regardless of how “safely” people play with them around here, they’re not being safe–they’re being stupid. In a fire danger zone, it’s just plain stupid to seek entertainment with little combustible units.