: : home     : : reviews     : : days gone by     : : litmag     : : who?     : : contact    

5 july 2000

i ate a big wad of cotton candy last night

I ate a big wad of cotton candy last night at the fireworks show. It was pretty delicious. I felt like a very lucky girl watching those fireworks, and it wasn't just the Neil Diamond-Lee Greenwood patriotic music mix making me all verklempt. Between the cotton candy, my own oohs and aahs over the show, and a general feeling of contentment; I couldn't think of anywhere else I wanted to be last night.,

If everything lines up right, Independence Day makes me feel as if I'm twelve years old again. I got to swim in a lake, eat corn on the cob and watermelon, lie around and read stuff , and watch my freckles make their yearly debut. The cotton candy topped the day, as no one can feel anything but childlike and sticky-faced while eating it. With each passing year, I appreciate this joyful contentment more and more. God Bless the USA blaring in the background doesn't hurt, either. What schmuck doesn't get a little teary on that one?

I guess I'm lucky in that my family has been able to trace part of its ancestry back to the 1700's. Hezekiah and Andrew Jackson, two of those ancestors, fought in the Revolutionary War while they lived in South Carolina. I'm not sure how everything turned out for them, but I've started to think of those two over the past few years. I don't even know if they were particularly brave guys or good shots. All I know is that they fought for a lot of things I take for granted. Like one sticky summer evening per year where we gather to point upward and collectively say, "cool."

Still, sometimes I don't know how proud I am to be an American. I didn't exactly earn the distinction; I was just fortunate enough to be born here. Even so, I'm not too proud about the fact that many Americans are a bunch of resource-hogging, gun-toting, overweight twerps who complain to the cooks too often. I have to remember to be proud of who we are at our best, the people who got us here in the first place. I need to remember to walk carefully upon the shoulders of the generations who hold me up, who have allowed me the freedom to write about my life and stuff in the first place.

For now, I'll say that I'm pretty happy to be American, and don't suppose I'd have it any other way. The scenery is great, the weather is okay, and the food is yummy. It's definitely the best place in the world to be twelve again.