Day Four - Peter AND Recap

I'm sorry for the extreme delay in posting this week, everyone. Blogger and I had a spat over posts that were deleted and unsaved, so I pouted for a few days and avoided blogging. However, that just left me behind, so I can safely say pouting accomplishes very little.

Bio: Peter is my younger brother, my closest friend AND my biggest competition. I don't know why I feel so competitive with him, perhaps because in our young childhood his natural athletic abilities allowed him to win EVERYTHING. Basketball games, BB target shooting, running races, my younger brother was / is just plain better at athletic endeavors than I. So, you may say, have you learned to accept this and be gracious about things you can't control? Of course not! I keep trying to beat him in every arena in life to this day! Never give up. Never surrender! (Yes, Peter = Nazi's at times.)

Peter is a pharmacist (though he never finished his four years at OSU, how that is OK in pharmacy world I don't understand) and lives in Arkansas with Anna and Shane (who you may remember from Day 2). Peter completed the medical trifecta in my family - my Dad is a doctor, my mom is a nurse, and my brother is a pharmacist. Which leaves me, the creative writer/graphic designer/amateur comedian, as odd duck out. But they try to be nice about it, so it's not that bad. And I did *accidentally* injure Peter quite a bit in childhood, so I guess I should be grateful he's so forgiving (metal crowbar to the face, doorframe to the collarbone, etc)

Fourth Day Challenge: "1. Eat a slice of watermelon.  2. Shoot off a firecracker  3. Overcome a fear"

Recap: So this was actually a lot easier than I anticipated for my brother. Perhaps his sweet wife moderated the torture he had planned. I ate some watermelon at a 4th of July BBQ, and also took care of the overcome a fear bit fearly early in the day (I decline to go into detail on that challenge.) Which left only the firecracker.

I was planning to set it off in my neighborhood, close to a nature trail so that if the police should pull up, I could flee to the trees and hide. (Do they arrest you for fireworks?). However, my roommate Jerrod, who is distressingly law-abiding, offered to take me to his cousin's house in rural Logan County, where it would be legal to set it off. So I agreed to that.
We drove to this house several miles north of Edmond on Western. And my eyes were opened to a whole new reality.

I guess I had this idea in my head that big fireworks, the really large mushroom cap explosions, were restricted, that only city groups or licensed operators who could explode them safely could purchase them. This is not the case in Logan county.

We passed at least 7 fireworks displays that were as large as anything I've ever seen at Frontier City, and they were just farmhouses and ranchland. I think two particularly close displays were dueling neighbors.

So it was against that backdrop that I set off my own firecracker. From it's shape I thought it would twirl up into the air in a graceful swirl of sparks. Here is me lighting the fuse.

Here is me waiting for something to happen.

And here is what did happen. It shot a stream of fire out one side for approximately 1.5 seconds, and then fizzled out.

Lame. But that completed that day's challenge, so I was content.

BD