On Exploding Extremities

I went through a firecracker phase when I was a kid. To put it simply, I viewed it as a rite of passage. I was convinced that learning how to blow up firecrackers was part of growing up: that I wouldn't be a proper Filipino male without it. One of my grade school classmates had blown off his middle finger playing with firecrackers, but I just wrote that little unpleasant detail off, for some reason. I exploded firecrackers for maybe about two or three years, after which it quickly lost its appeal.

I'll admit there was something thrilling about blowing things up, but nobody had to scare me away from it with images of bloody stumps where fingers or hands used to be. I just really got bored with it, especially after firecracker prices climbed. Essentially, you're just watching your money blow up with that crap.

I don't know if it's because of callousness or just out of disgust with the Filipino's borderline irrational need to make loud noises, but sometime ago I found myself feeling absolutely no sympathy for the young (and sometimes not so young) men who would turn up on the front page of the New Year's Day edition of the newspaper with their hands or fingers blown off. I mean,as far back I think as the Ramos administration, the government has tried to ban firecrackers every year, especially considering that the triangular ones are made by kids in sweatshops in Bulacan. EVERY year they do this, and yet EVERY year a segment of our population feels the need to defy the ban.

So no, I really don't give a shit whenever I find out that someone who patently ignored the authorities' admonition not to use something that could potentially maim or kill them has used that something and has in fact been maimed. My sympathy goes much more to those who are hit by stray bullets, especially considering a lot of them are young children minding their own business.

There are so many wonderful ways to celebrate the New Year. A nice dinner, a party, or time with the family. Heck, why not just give Christmas gifts all over again? It would probably cost just as much as stocking up on those ludicrous firecrackers.

This afternoon, my family and I hope to escape the idiocy of the noise and the smoke, so I am whisking them off somewhere I hope we won't really be affected by it.

Yeah, so I may be a wimp, but at least you won't ever see me on the front page on New Year's day with a maimed hand. A bullet in my head, maybe, but...well...

Happy New Year anyway.