The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
Fireworks Etiquette?
I am not as big on manners, etiquette, and calling out rudeness as my wife-- most of the time, breaches of decorum fascinate me more than annoy me-- but even I was at the end of my rope last night at the town fireworks display; my wife and I walked down the street with a couple of camping chairs and sat at the top of the hill overlooking the park-- they shoot off the fireworks from down by the river-- and a group of middle-aged ladies and a guy (and when I saw middled-aged I mean they seemed a little older than us . . . but who the hell knows anymore because we're old too) stood behind us-- very close to our chairs and they started having an insanely annoying and very loud conversation-- which is fine, it's Independence Day and we're celebrating free speech and the first amendment and all that-- but then they continued the conversation once the fireworks began-- but they had to talk even louder and motion even more vociferously, because they had to compete with the explosions-- and their discussion ranged from places they had traveled: Bar Harbor, Arizona, Duluth . . . with no theme-- just basically saying places-- to a long and tangential discussion of the speed of sound-- and they estimated the speed of sound for quite a while, never really getting close to the actual speed (approximately 761 mph/1100 feet per second) and its relation to the speed of light and how you see the fireworks before you hear them-- then they started estimating the distance of the mortars from the viewing area-- on and on and on, non-stop inane dialogue, right in our ears-- and I knew my wife was really getting pissed off and so was the guy standing in front of me-- I thought he was going to turn around and hit them with his cane, he kept giving them the evil eye-- but they didn't notice because they were yapping away-- and his daughter kept trying to calm him down so he didn't commit assault with an ambulatory assistive device-- and then those two finally moved and my wife and I followed suit . . . the loudest lady of the coven said, "YOU'RE GIVING UP THIS GOOD SPOT?" but we did not deign to talk to her and instead walked a bit up the hill and watched the finale with a neighbor and his daughter, with the proper amount of conversation for a firework display-- we said appropriate things like "ooh, that's a nice one" and "wow" and "that's a crowd favorite" and so while I am a proponent of freedom and liberty and do-what-you-want, I will say that these very annoying people were definitely pushing the boundaries of personal space and allowable noise during a visual display.
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2 comments:
The same thing happens at concerts too often... unless, of course, it's a Wilco show when Jeff Tweedy will make a loud and embarrassing point on the microphone to explain the concept of other people and that they came to see the show and not hear dumb strangers' inane banter.
yeah, i guess they needed a sign . . .
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