National holidays. Gotta love ‘em.

I have always had a–let’s call it a “nontraditional” schedule. I’m not interested in working nine to five, in the whole TGIF routine, in going shopping on Saturdays, to mass on Sundays, and so on. I am especially not interested in taking my vacations with hordes of other vacationers. Isn’t the point to “get away”? Or did I miss something? I mean, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go to, say, the Cape this weekend. Half of Boston is there. What are you getting away from? Hmm, well, the other half, I guess.

It could be enough to be able to say, on the fifth, at the water cooler, or whatever: “yeah, I went down to the Cape last weekend.” That way, if nothing else, people know you weren’t forced to tough it out here in Boston with the prolies. I mean, lining up on Storrow Drive to watch the fireworks. How working class is that?

Personally, I’m all for fireworks. In my neighborhood they’ve been shooting them off pretty much nonstop every night for a month already. Every night’s the 4th of July here in Dot! As long as it means you can shoot something off, blow something up, or light something (or someone) on fire! ¡Viva América!

But if you want to know the truth, I never really got into national holidays. They always seem like an accident waiting to happen. I mean, masses of people with nothing to do all day. You got ‘em gathering with no supervision. And we all know that crowds are just mobs that haven’t been incited yet.

And the fourth is not one of those holidays where people are getting or giving gifts, or hunting for eggs or going door to door begging for candy, either. You’re just sitting around eating hotdogs and drinking beer all day. It’s inevitable that by the end of it all people are going to want to blow shit up, just out of sheer boredom.

That’s why the state sponsors all these fireworks. Because, can you imagine if they didn’t?

Still, I’m sorry, but I just don’t like crowds. And I don’t like crowds because I don’t trust crowds. And I don’t trust crowds because you can’t trust crowds. I don’t care how well-intentioned they are. One-on-one a person can’t stampede you to death. In a crowd, they’ll do it gladly.

And we all know it doesn’t take much to spook ‘em. They say two heads are better than one, but that applies mainly to cattle. As stupid as people act when they’re alone, they get exponentially stupider the more you put together. And people love crowds because there’s no accountability in crowds. People in a crowd will stomp you to a bloody pulp and then be like, “what?”

Thing is, I was a latchkey kid, same as every other kid in the neighborhood where I grew up. Every summer in my neighborhood was like The Lord of the Flies. No adults around ten hours a day and when they did come home, after they put out the slop and you all fed at the trough, they were finished with you. We were raised like free-range pigs. We had adult supervision for, like, twenty minutes a day, max. As long as you weren’t missing any limbs at bed-check, they considered that the supreme proof of good-parenting.

That’s where I come from.

But it wasn’t so bad. I think it was better, for me, at least, than if my every move had been micromanaged, like it seems is the case with kids nowadays. Longfellow wrote, “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,/And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” And that sums up those long, adult-free, summer days of my lost youth.

I loved my latchkey summers. I could hold my own with the kid-gangs that ruled the streets, but even at an early age I didn’t care for the flaming hoops and hierarchies that define a social life, regardless of age, color, or class. I built myself a little hobbit hutch amongst the pine trees in the back yard–my own little Walden before I’d ever heard of Henry Thoreau–and that’s where I spent most of my time, digging in the dirt, conducting my thought experiments, contemplating infinity, thinking those long, long thoughts.

So I never liked the big to-do type holidays, where you got loaded up with the rest of the family in the old station wagon, and trundled off to relatives’ or family friends’, seemingly against everyone involded’s will (and certainly against all our better judgment).

And this was especially bad in the summer. There were two criteria for family outings in the summertime: wherever we went had to have an amusement park and a major league baseball team. (These criteria might have been even further refined, but they already spelled a sort of doom and gloom for me, so I didn’t go any further into it than I had to.)

Even when I was a kid, I was never amused by amusement parks. They always seemed an utter waste of time for me. I was pretty capable of amusing myself for the most part, and didn’t see the point of having to stand in long lines in what always seemed to be oppressive heat to do something that was not really all that amusing in the first place.

But then, there’s a certain type of personage, I have gathered—my older brother was one—for whom rollercoasters are especially thrilling. Yes, speed gets the adrenaline pumping, there’s no doubt. But there are apparently people for whom that adrenaline rush is enough. Not for me. From a very early age, I was more demanding of my amusements. I needed catharsis. I never found a rollercoaster that did it for me. Descarte’s Demon at Six Flags over Cincinnati came close. The Cathartic Comet at Busch Gardens St. Louis was on the right track but disappointed on that last loop-dee-loop.

It was enough for my bro, though. He could go back to the same rollercoaster again and again. He’d wait in line forever for that three-minute frig, like an addict in search of his fix. And when it was over, what had changed? Nothing. Hmm. need another fix.

His never-ending enthusiasm was almost infectious. Once I got so infected, in fact, that I threw up on my mother, who, upon drawing the short straw, had been forced to accompany me on one of those girlie rides: the spinning teacups. Oh, goodie.

Personally, I liked the idea of teacups. The ride seemed very refined and civilized, like that Mad Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland, and as such, somehow, potentially cathartic.

But while we sometimes confuse catharsis with throwing up, and vice-versa, I have come to understand, after ample experience with both, that they are not the same thing.

But it was enough for my brother. It’s like people for whom drunkenness is the point of being drunk. The rush was an end in itself. The thrill was the thrill. For me it was always, like, “hmm, thrilling. Is that all there is?” This question would lead down the path to despair, I knew. But there in the abyss, beyond the loop-dee-loop I would find my catharsis as well. While my brother stood in line, scratching his ass, in despair of not knowing he’s in despair. Poor sod.

But I do like hotdogs. I am a food whore. Always have been. Not gonna lie about it, try and pretty it up. Why should I? And we’re talking anything from bratwurst to beluga here. It’s all good.

I guess there’s no reason the fourth can’t be a few choice friends, good food, and fireworks. Still don’t know if I’m willing to brave the crowds down at the hatch shell, though.