The Fourth

I hope everyone had a good holiday(those of us that live in the States).

Pat and I hung around the house working on getting the area ready for the pool. It was sprinkling so it made it cooler to work outside. After doing all we could outside we cleaned up and headed to Walmart. I needed some ice cream to take to the picnic/cook out we were invited to.

We found where we were going and ate until we were ready to pop! Afterwards fireworks started. Some of these were pretty big fireworks! Now I am leery of people shooting off fireworks having worked in ERs on the holidays in the past. I have seen too many accidents. Last night everything was going well even though my stomach and head kept telling me something was going to happen. And it did. One of the fireworks tipped over and shot one along the ground towards us. It went up the driveway where no one was at thank goodness. Another time one tipped over and a dummy kept trying to stand it up. It was one of those fountain types. I just knew his leg would catch on fire. The rest of the night went without incident. Then it started raining a bit and they started setting them off faster. It was a pretty good display of fireworks. THEN the horrifying thing happened that I was afraid of. One of the large fireworks split and started shooting them along the ground. One shot into the crowd about 5 feet from me. I could see it exploding and grabbed a little child and dived on top of Brook just as the second explosion hit. I would rather be burned myself than have a child burned. Unfortunately right where the first and second explosion happened 2 small children were standing. One was knocked down because it hit her right before the explosion. She only suffered 2 small burns on her chest. I saw it hit her but was not close enough and I did have my hands full. The other child has a few small blisters on her legs. People were hollaring and grabbing them but no one knew what to do. I grabbed one of them and hollared to dunk them in the tub. There was a tub filled with ice and melted ice. We got everybody calmed down and the crowd left.

Of course there is one idiot in every crowd. This one guy gets his picture phone out and takes a picture of the little girl with the burns on her chest. He says hey I got to get this. Not every day you see this happen. And he was laughing. I wanted to smack him so hard.

Not a good end to an otherwise good day.