Independence Day

Our first fourth of July while living in Portland Texas, my father took us down to the beach to set off fireworks.  We had spent many New Year's eves and Independence days on Virginia Beach celebrating so my Dad wanted to keep that tradition on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.
Dad had gone to a local fireworks dealer and loaded up on various, dangerous fireworks, all fireworks are technically dangerous after all.  Fireworks are miniature bombs made with real gunpowder.  Of course the usual yearly warnings from the local fire departments were on the television asking people to be careful and giving the statistics for emergency room visits every year. 
Dad had bought fire crackers, sparklers, bottle rockets, and roman candles among other fun merry makers.  We did the sparklers first, they are mildly entertaining at best; when you are three or four it is very entertaining but the thrill leaves as you grow older.  Dad, next, set off the bottle rockets,  my opinion of bottle rockets are that they are horrifically boring, so with the complaints he sustained between my sisters and me he moved on to the roman candles.
Roman candles are clearly marked with precautions on the side of their packaging.  You are not to hold them in your hand; you are not to point them toward anybody or anything.  Beware, beware and beware.  Poor Dad, he was typical male, "What warnings?  Oh, they are for people who don't know what they are doing."  Alrighty then.  Dad is left handed and so he held the roman candle with his left hand pointing away from him and us and lit them with his right hand.  Once he lit the roman candles he would stretch out his arm and aim the projectiles out over the gulf.  This went well for the first couple of roman candles; it was that magic third candle that was his waterloo.  Dad lit the candle, held it out as he had done with the previous ones and the first ball shot out, the second shot out, oops, the third did not shoot out,  instead the roman candle with its' remaining four projectiles exploded in his hand.  It was loud and stung so bad that my father at first thought he had lost his hand.  Looking down he discovered he did not lose it but it had been badly burned.  It was black.  The hand quickly went numb with pain, he hollered and we packed up and ran for the car.  No one with my father had a drivers' license and my mother had stayed home with the younger children.  Dad had to do the driving to the emergency room.  He drove all right, fast and with his left hand hanging out of the window catching the salty, fresh gulf air.  My Dad, intelligent man that he was, had become a statistic.
It took a couple of weeks for the normal feeling to my fathers' hand but guess what, he never held fireworks in his hand again!  Every year when the newscast would warn people of the accident statistics of fireworks we would look at my father and laugh, he laughed along with us.  We could laugh because although his had was badly burned, it was still there and perfectly fine in the end.  He was a lucky man!