Something You Won't Read In The Official South Carolina Visitors Guide
South Carolina is North Carolina's rowdy brother. Actually, in comparison to North Carolina, South Carolina is like the Wild West. They have casino cruises. If you're twenty-one, you don't need to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle. They had the lottery long before we did. I truly believed we were going to be the last state in the nation to get a lottery because my fellow North Carolinians thought scratch-offs were a tool of the Devil. I figured while everyone else was playing their numbers we would still be reading Numbers.In South Carolina, you can purchase real fireworks. In North Carolina, it is illegal to buy, purchase, and possess fireworks that spin or shoot into the air, which pretty much limits our Fourth of July festivities to sparklers and flashlights. But in South Carolina, they sell professional grade fireworks that will easily blow off your hand.
When I was in middle school, illegal fireworks were all the rage. Every so often, someone with a cool dad would come back from South Carolina with a bag of fireworks which always led to an emergency Saturday night sleepover. Since we lived in a small town, a police car would be seen patrolling the neighborhood within fifteen minutes of the beginning of a bottle rocket war. Of course, when you're stupid enough to accidentally shoot a roman candle into a cop's tree, you reap what you sow. But that's a story for another day (one that involves openly lying to a cop, bats (the flying kind), and vomiting in a tent).
On Independence Day, we were going to take the kids to a proper fireworks show that started at 10:00 PM, but both kids were rather pissy from a full day of swimming/shopping/messing around so we decided a 9:00 PM bedtime was in order. But it turns out we didn't really need to go to a show. All we needed to do was stand on our balcony.
We went out on the balcony and watched as people launched fireworks up and down the beach. We went back inside fifteen minutes later. Because really? Once you've seen ten minutes worth of fireworks, it tends to get a bit redundant after that.
But before we went back inside the condo, I noticed a guy sitting alone on the beach. No one was within fifty feet of him. Why? Because every so often, he would light a Black Cat and throw it in a random direction. It's easy to be a loner when you shoot fireworks at people.
I think we could've been best friends.
Song of the day: Sad Tomorrow by The Muffs
