UNPOPULAR OPINION: I Was Born On The 4th Of July And I Hate Fireworks*
*Especially this year when every explosion's a reminder of America's broken promises. PLUS, ON AN UPBEAT NOTE: Final TWO DAYS to get a free Sassy shirt or signed Sassy issue!
Hi and happy whatever day!
This Unpopular Opinion is a little bonus ditty (as opposed to a doozy, like this crazy It Happened To Me by the same writer - I would say to check this link out first if you haven’t read it already - because it’s crazy and because it will give you background on who Emma is and where she is coming from). And today’s is just an extra story for anyone who's in the mood for some topical or relevant programming for your holiday weekend. I am not doing anything particularly Fourth of July-oriented, so I'll be hanging out here working and in the comments with anyone else who is not participating. (I'm making it sound like a political stance when actually I just have no plans. But I have political stances too and I will happily share them in the comments if you like.)
I love you all so so much every day of every year wherever in the hell we are.
Jane
By Emma Margraf
The moment the moms and aunts set their chairs down on the beach, we kids were free to roam like a pack of sweaty, sand-covered explorers. Jersey summers were humid, and we were fueled by our crumb cake and iced tea breakfasts, followed by afternoons chasing down the ice cream truck. I’d just turned 10, born on the 4th of July, and we were staying with family friends in an inherited beach house in a quiet part of the Jersey Shore. I was old enough to be on my own in the ocean with my gang of cousins and friends, floating up and over the waves, crashing under them, and getting back up over and over again. It was the ‘80s, Ronald Reagan was president, and everyone on the shore loved Bruce Springsteen. “Born in the U.S.A.” played everywhere on repeat.
I loved being out past where I could stand in the ocean, floating on boogie boards, hanging out with the older kids. We were celebrating the 4th of July and my birthday, and the older kids were arguing about Bruce, what they heard from their parents about Ronald Reagan, and protest.
“Born in the U.S.A.!” sang one cousin.
“Happy birthday Emma!” called a neighbor as she floated by.
“You were born on July 4th?” an older girl looked sideways at me. “That must be your favorite song, right?”
Everyone was talking at once, and another kid said, “Born in the U.S.A.! It’s all about this country being the greatest country in the world!”
“Shut up, dumbass, that song is about how our country sucks!”
“What? No way.”
“Her birthday should be another day,” said Sara, “she hates fireworks!”
“What?!”
“How could anyone hate fireworks?” a neighbor kid asked, like I’d committed a crime.
“’Cause they are boring and loud and they suck. We always find trash in the water after them too,” said Joey, a devoted surfer and always the one most likely to have my back. He smiled at me, everyone laughed, and I said, “They do suck.”
With that, like with so many narratives among childhood squads, we decided that fireworks do, in fact, suck.
“Other countries are outpacing us on being human.”
Forty-two years later, my birthday has made me feel more conflicted each year. I have always been in love with what this country could be. I worked in electoral politics for almost a decade, and I love everything about what people, both liberals and conservatives, have called the promise of America. One person, one vote. A place for everyone, a chance for everyone, and equity at the forefront. Every year, it gets harder to hope that enough of the rest of the country wants that too.
I spent years knocking on doors for campaign after campaign, having voters roll their eyes when I said conservatives were aiming to reverse Roe v. Wade, saying it was settled. People told me to go away. People at door after door told me voting didn’t matter. In my mind, it mattered more than almost anything else.
I’ve always tried to take time on my birthday to go to the beach, to the water, to eat some seafood, and breathe somewhere that I am not usually sitting. One year, I found myself in a bar in a small town with a guy who – by the look of him – couldn’t have been more different than me. It was his birthday too. He saw that I was there with my girlfriend, and we didn’t look like we belonged in this dive bar, but he still asked me if I wanted to do a birthday shot with him. I said yes, absolutely, and let him pick the shot. He chose Fireball Whiskey, and I managed to toast with him and get the shot down without embarrassing myself. It was a nice moment.
“The list of things that make us special is getting shorter and shorter.”
Sick with some kind of unidentified illness recently, I went to Urgent Care, then came home feeling great after a round of fluids and IV antibiotics. I told my girlfriend that I wanted to do this regularly; to go in and get serviced like a race car so I could feel this way every day.“You know what that is?” my girlfriend said. “It’s what happens in other countries.”
She’s right about that; other countries are outpacing us on being human. We pride ourselves on freedom, and like Jeff Daniels says in the opening of “The Newsroom,” plenty of countries have freedom. Other countries outpace us when it comes to voting, and we’re always voting against things instead of for them. We’ve been told we can’t have socialized medicine – and why would you want it? You have to wait so long for care. Now, in our country, it takes 3-6 months to get into specialists’ offices and you get to pay extra for the privilege. The list of things that make us special is getting shorter and shorter.
My birthday has always made me feel tied to this country’s foundation in a way other people born on the 4th don’t seem to experience. I mean, we do commiserate a bit. The guy in the bar with the Fireball agreed with me that everyone who is born on a holiday has a collection of things they hear every time their birthday comes up at the doctor’s office, at school, or at the coffee shop. These are ours:
Wow! You were born on the 4th of July? Did you think the fireworks were for you?
Lucky you! You get fireworks for your birthday!
Setting off fireworks of your own is illegal in many parts of my state, but tribes sell them on reservations. Some very nice teenagers came over to us – seeing there were young kids with us – and said they were going to set off some fireworks. I was extremely grateful to have the kids as an easy excuse to leave, so I hightailed it back to the car as quickly as I could. We could hear the booms as we drove away, and I was happy to go home and try to tell my dogs we weren’t under attack. Every year, every firework that explodes feels like a reminder of the broken American promised land, where the crimes are piling up.
Meanwhile, Bruce Springsteen is still selling out stadiums and making everyone on the Jersey Shore proud. Those stadiums packed with fans listening to Bruce’s messages of working-class freedom make me hope that every single one of them will be in the voting booth. This year, on my birthday, I will be at a different beach with my family, hoping to avoid fireworks and trying to keep up with my nieces as they run through the surf.
I think about those Jersey summers and how I was only a part of that squad because of family history. Which brings me to this: I had a boss tell me this year that if I don’t think it’s psychologically safe, or if I don’t think people in the room will understand me, or if I don’t think I am going to win – that I don’t show up.
No boss has ever been that honest with me before, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t tell my Jersey squad they were a little bit racist. I didn’t tell the teenagers that I left the beach because I hate fireworks. I can code-switch, but I don’t always truly show up. And the more I think about it, the more I think our entire country needs this feedback. We need to do more – to show up. Not just for the people who agree with us, but for everyone.
I don’t have answers. On this birthday, I am going to float out past where I can stand and let the waves crash over me as a constant reminder that the earth will always have a power greater than fireworks, and that we get to live here and appreciate it. Maybe the ocean will give me some ideas.
When people inevitably ask me, I’m going to say no, I never thought the fireworks were for me. As we agreed in the ocean that day, they suck. Every year I want to see them less and less. But if a stranger who shares my birthday wants to celebrate with me, I welcome that. Welcoming strangers is what the holiday should be about.
Happy 250th birthday, United States of America.
And happy birthday to me.
Emma, Thank you for another enticing piece and thanks for giving me an image of Bobo, the cutest, so I could run his picture with this story also!
Oh, gosh, happy birthday and thanks for sharing this, Emma. I can identify with that characterization of choosing not to show up at times (especially when younger) if feeling emotionally unsafe or that I couldn't "win." That self-protection instinct serves a purpose while you need it and until you don't.