It’s no secret that I am a total nerd for This American Life. Ira Glass is the bee’s knees and so on. I haven’t been able to get enough of the show so I have been downloading episodes from itunes to listen to at work (I would stream them from the site but I don’t have speakers on my computer). Yesterday I heard the episode titled “A Little Bit of Knowledge,” one of the acts talks about beliefs that are completely not true or normal that are held into adulthood. Since it was just the 4th of July, it reminds me of the thing I thought everyone else did until I was 19.
As a child, I really thought my family was the most normal family, not that my family is a band of gypsies or anything but I really thought everyone’s family was just like mine. I thought everyone’s dad worked on motorcycles, rode motorcycles, had a garage so orderly like a workshop with posters and such, listened to hard rock, had tattoos on their forearms. I figured out mid elementary school that it was not the case. I went to school before year round school became more prevalent so I never talked to kids in school about the 4th of July.
I never realized until having a conversation at work with my friend Tara, that people do not normally light sprinklers and fireworks with a blowtorch. I really thought everyone did that and that was completely normal. So I was talking nonchalantly about dad getting out the blowtorch and how my sister, Diana, wouldn’t go near sparklers since she was burned a little bit when she was like 6 (totally thinking the being afraid of sparklers was odd.) I will never forget the look on my friend’s face.
She said “blowtorch?”
I was like “yeah don’t you use a blowtorch? what?”
and she was like “NO.”
I was like “really? Not even to light sparklers?”
“NO Christina.”
“oh.”
When I got off of work, I drove straight home and told my parents that OTHER PEOPLE DO NOT USE A BLOWTORCH ON THE 4TH OF JULY NOT EVEN FOR SPARKLERS. IT IS DANGEROUS. Dad thought it was pretty funny. To be fair to my dad, us kids didn’t use the blowtorch, he just did. When the kids lit off the fireworks, we would use the lighter that people use to light candles. But still. Insane. It made me think about whatever else odd thing that my parents thought it was an okay thing to do.
My dad also told us that the “punks” (I’m not sure if they are even called that-who knows how much lying was done), the sticks that looked like sparklers but didn’t sparkle they just kept the light to light fireworks, was made of “camel shit.” Looking back on that now too, I suppose they are not. I could do research but I think I will make an educated guess that I am correct in my new assessment.
Current Listening-The Dead Weather “Horehound”
