Precious Moments #1

Bad Firework Etiquette

In October of 2008, Jenny and I had a Halloween Party at our apartment in New Britain. I decided that an excellent way for me to enjoy myself at this party was to dress up as one of my favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, and really dive in and explore the character.

In the weeks leading up to the party I spent a lot of time looking for bits of the costume - I already had the yellow-tinted shooting glasses, and I eventually found an appropriate hunting coat, a great Hawaiian shirt, a decent white Gilligan hat and a cigarette holder.

As the party got under way and I began to really work myself into character, I drank. Copious amounts of Chivas Regal and cheap beer were just as much a part of the costume as the proper shirt, cigarette holder, etc... inebriation was definitely a key part of the character, as were bad decisions.

Feeling that I had mastered the mannerisms and speech patterns of HST, I began to work on developing the behavior. This coalesced into one beautiful moment when, after having already shown off my character to everyone, boredom forced my hand - I needed to shake things up a bit and make a memory.

Earlier, Jenny had preemptively hid my bullhorn, so I instead prepared for the party by stuffing my pockets with fireworks. Forgoing the real South Carolina fireworks, I pulled out a lousy, bullshit Connecticut firework - a strobe. For being a lousy bullshit Connecticut firework, the strobe really has it's place in distracting people and livening things up - it's the premiere lousy bullshit Connecticut firework.

I went into the kitchen looking for something reasonable to put it on and found someone else's plate. Perfect. I set the strobe up in the kitchen and lit it - the loud sizzling noise and bright flashing lights were of some surprise to the people who were in the room at the time, but none were so surprised as Jenny, who was in the living room - she was quite livid.

From the kitchen I could hear her violent, profane reaction to this, so I quickly escaped out the back of the kitchen to the bedroom. At this point I should note that in the old New Britain three family walk-up that we lived in, like so many of it's kind, the interior was set up in a circuit - so, although the kitchen and living room were directly connected, I could also walk down a hallway and through the bedroom to get to the living room. When Jenny entered the kitchen, bloodthirsty, I was making my way through the living room and out the front door.

I waited out on the front porch with a few smokers, but the sense of quiet was unnerving - I had expected her to immediately find and chastise me for my behavior or something. But there was nothing. So I timidly went back inside to investigate. I was just in time to see Jenny walking purposefully toward the back of the apartment with my whole drawer of fireworks in hand, which were clearly headed to the garbage can.

I quickly rushed to the rescue of my beloved fireworks. For her to get to the garbage can, she would have to go onto the back porch, walk down half a flight of stairs (we lived on the first floor) and round the corner - the cans were just below our back porch. Time was of the essence.

Between the time that she was on the stairs and when she was around the back of the building - five seconds tops - I had run through the kitchen and out the back door, leapt over the railing and onto one of the garbage cans to secure the lid and prevent Jenny from throwing my fireworks away. But, the cans had wheels on the back, and they quickly slid out from under me. I rode those cans to the ground, managing to keep one hand on the railing, so that when Jenny rounded the corner, there I was, standing amidst three huge, fallen garbage cans - having appeared, destructively, from out of nowhere, looking rather confused and disoriented.

Frustrated, she made my friend Brian take the whole drawer home with him. For no less than six months, we were missing a drawer from that yellow filing cabinet.