EDITORIAL: Be safe and courteous this holiday

You wouldn’t want your elderly parents or grandparents to put up with it.

Or your brother or uncle or aunt who’s suffering from PTSD from their service in the war.

You wouldn’t want your devoted dog or office cat freaking out in fear and confusion from the incessant blasts.

You wouldn’t want some jerks keeping your young kids awake all night, making them miserable and tired for the weekend.

You wouldn’t want to have to wake up early for work in the morning after a night of covering your head with your pillow to muffle the sounds.

While we’re on the subject of Fourth of July fireworks — that’s what we were talking about if you didn’t catch the drift — you wouldn’t want to have to leave a great party to take yourself or someone else to the emergency room for a severe burn or amputation due to your negligence in shooting off fireworks.

You wouldn’t want to stand by while the fire department puts out the blaze on your roof or a neighbor’s because a firework you shot off flew in the wrong direction.

You wouldn’t want to explain to the fire chief how you thought the sparkler was cool enough to put in the trash can in the garage. Explosives and drunk amateurs rarely mix well. Know what you’re doing or don’t do it.

OK. Let’s get off fireworks and onto the road.

You wouldn’t want to be the one behind the wheel when your family crashes into a tree because you were drinking too many beers at the family picnic. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for the death of that child in the other car or in the baby carriage because you felt confident behind the wheel. You wouldn’t want to be the one facing serious criminal charges for running into a bicyclist or plowing into a motorcyclist.

It’s Fourth of July weekend, and it’s supposed to be about having fun. It’s a celebration of America and freedom, a celebration of summer, a celebration for no reason at all.

But with a great party comes great responsibility.

Fireworks are dangerous, and regularly send thousands of people to the emergency room each holiday weekend.

Fireworks are also loud and disturbing, particularly when they go on deep into the middle of the night.

And what can we say about mixing alcohol and driving, or exhaustion and driving, or just carelessness and driving, at a time when transportation officials expect holiday traffic this year to be at pre-covid levels despite high gas prices.

We each have a responsibility to ourselves and to others to celebrate the holiday safely and in consideration of others.

Think how you’d feel being the one suffering the effects of your own celebration.

Then act accordingly.

Categories: Editorial, Opinion