POPPOPPOP
June 28, 2011So yesterday someone kept setting off firecrackers outside our building, those really loud POPPOPPOP kind that made me jump out of my seat and might have been giving me some mild traumatic flashbacks. I couldn't see who was doing it but I could HEAR it, oh my word. So the third time they went off I yelled out the window "ENOUGH" but I was so mad it sounded like "EEEAAAAGH" and Henry came out of his room and suggested, "Maybe you should call the police, Mom."
I shouted "GET YOUR MAMA SOME SCOTCH, FOR HER NERVOUS CONDITION" but he just rolled his eyes and went back into his room. He's a sensible boy.
I called 311, which is the number you call for noise complaints (and assorted other NYC concerns, like incorrect recycling, and rats with weapons), and the conversation I had then with the lovely 311 lady went thusly:
311: "How can I help you?"
Me: "Someone is setting off firecrackers, and it's incredibly loud, so I'm calling to make a noise complaint. Because of all the noise, you see."
311: "Oh, that's illegal."
Me: "?"
311. "Setting off firecrackers is illegal, ma'am."
Me: "Right, which is why I'm calling you."
311: "It says here in the something something code blah blah blah illegal illegal illegal."
Me: "Sure does sound illegal!"
311: "This is a police matter."
Me: "And you're not the police, is what you're trying to tell me?"
311: [deep, pained sigh] "I'll patch you in to 911. Just…just stay quiet and let me speak first. I'm going to speak first. Okay? Then it'll be your turn."
[pause. beeping noises]
911: "911, what's your emerg--"
Me: "THERE'S A LOT OF NOISE AND THE 311 LADY SAID--"
311: "MA'AM."
Okay, I made that last part up. But I loved how she was so insistent that I not speak first. So concerned! So insistent! I was clearly unpredictable and dangerous. For all she knew, *I* was the person setting off the firecrackers. Maybe I was? It's all a blur.
P.S. I have no idea if the police came, even. Anyway, when I shouted EEEAAAAIGH out the window someone replied, "He's leaving, he's leaving." I didn't take their word for it, but maybe it was the case. Like we had been visited by the Firecracker Guy, and his shift was over. He knew when enough was enough. Or when enough was EEAAAUUGH. That must be the worst job ever. How do you hear anything, Firecracker Guy?
P.P.S. I do not get the whole loud-popping-noise-firecracker appeal. I get the appeal of sparklers and things that make whooshing noises and are pretty. I do not understand why loud shit that is scary and also LOUD would be fun, in any way. I ranted about this to Scott, who asked me, "Were you ever a kid?" Of course I wasn't! What a ridiculous notion.
Reader Comments (35)
I fucking hate fireworks, so you can imagine how happy I am that I live in Texas. Like I say every year, "Them crackers sure loves thems some 'crackers."
EEEAAAAGH!
Now living by a Marine Corps base that regularly explodes munitions. I'll get my own booze.
The Firecracker Man has a cousin: The Fast and the Furious Doing Donuts on My Street at 2am Guy. There is no _11 number that cares about them. I just lie in bed and wish them massive head trauma which somehow only affects them.
I thought I knew firecrackers....and then I moved to the South.
Come 4th of July, my Southern neighbors will laugh at my paltry "firecrackers" because they will be setting off bombs. Fucking bombs.
I don't get fireworks either. My husband used to work on the 4th of July and I would get stuck with the fireworks for the kids. My cocker spaniel had to be locked inside since he would try to attack them. Fireworks= money going up in smoke.
I love Scott's reply, "Were you ever a kid?"
We live in my parent's house and it backs a golf course. One Wednesday night (about 11:30pm), I was so annoyed by some LOUD teenagers playing on the golf course that were keeping me awake- "Don't they know it's WEDNESDAY night??? Don't they know what time it is?" And then I remembered that I was a loud teenager on that very golf course not so long ago.
When my mom was VERY pregnant with me, she went to the 4th of July fireworks on the National Mall in Washington DC. If you've never been, they are so intense the ground literally shakes. I've been terrified of loud explosions ever since. I don't care if they "look pretty".
The upside of the severe drought Texas is under this year? Fireworks are banned. Now we just have to see if people comply or not.
i'm with you. firecrackers are overrated. though, i do remember being impressed by the six inch deep firecracker litter blanketing every street in chinatown at chinese new year. back in the day, that is. i think they frown on that now.
Fireworks scare the bejeezus out of me. And I have never understood the appeal of the loud ones. Pretty, sparkly ones, yes. Although, sparklers scare me, too. No one should have ever told me JUST HOW HOT they get. All I needed to know was that they were too hot to touch. Now that I know they're like a thousand degrees I won't go near the things.
Here's what you do. You follow the sound of the firecrackers until you find the culprits. They will be of the male persuasion. Just before the set off another round you scream, "Hey, looka here!" Then give birth at their feet. They'll never shoot off firecrackers again.
People in New York are so polite! (I am Yet Another Texas Reader. It's weird, with all the Texans up in here. Anyhoodle, if I yelled "Enough!" or "Eaauugh!" or anything like that to one of my neighbors when they were setting off fireworks, they'd be all, "Lemme get my shotgun! A few rounds of this baby and you'll be BEGGING me to go back to fireworks!")(Except fireworks are banned this year, as one of the other Texas readers mentioned.)(Not that that will stop anyone! I'm just saying! I've lived here for a long time! I know what's what.)
In conclusion: never move to Texas. Despite your apparent and perhaps alarming, FOR YOU, popularity down here.
As a child, I was truly terrified of firecrackers to the point of being thoroughly phobic. They scared the everloving shit out of me.
One time my family had come into the city to go out to dinner with another family in Chinatown. No one quite realized it was Chinese New Year, or what that might mean for me. When we went in to eat it was still daytime, and relatively quiet. But by the time we emerged in the evening, it was a full-blown firecracker inferno. I had to be carried, screaming and blubbering, to the car.
In hindsight? Diagnosing myself with sensory processing disorder, hyper-sensitive variety. Yes, as a child loud sounds were actually physically painful to me. We know about this stuff now, how it is neurologically based. But back then I was just "weird" and often teased by my peers for being "sensitive."
I believe you.
You were never a kid.
Neither was I.
I was always a befuddled adult.
xo
I love you, Alice Bradley
never move to Omaha. Okay, you probably would never want to do that anyway, but one of the biggest reasons not to is the sheer number of Jackholes that set off fire crackers for WEEKS leading up to the 4th of July, and honest to god giant fucking FIREWORKS from their driveways for HOURS on the 4th. Like, the huge fireworks that shoot way up into the sky at professional shows - people are setting those off in the streets. Which is illegal here too by the way, not that the police seem to do anything about it even though it lasts until like 2 am and last year our street looked like Beirut with the smoke and explosions and detritus, and our kids were so freaked out by the noise they had to sleep in the basement. Stupid fucking Omaha - I used to like fireworks but not any more
The Firecracker Guy visited our neighborhood after you chased him away from yours. Thanks a lot.
Fight the power! Loud noises are bad. Also, I am 80 years old.
Screw the fireworks Alice, I just had to tell you that I absolutely love your hair! I stumbled across your blog, probably last year or something, while I was at work and was immediately addicted. Then I had a ridiculous bout of "I shouldn't be doing this at work" and erased all my blog links....it was about the time you decided to let your real color shine through. I'm so glad I saw a link to your blog again and came back to read you. I'm now a fellow silver sister although not with as much POW as you have. I won't erase you again :)
I am SO WITH YOU. I once wrote a post about this in which I felt like I made a definitive case that fireworks are inherently inane, complete with a chart demonstrating the cost/benefit ratio of their use: http://bit.ly/l7mgtU I thought my case was air-tight, yet all these people wrote in in defense of activities that revolve around a stick going boom. I will never understand it.
OMG I could not identify more with this post. I HATE firecrackers. I cannot stand listening to them, at any distance. Beautiful fireworks? Sure. They are awesome and have a purpose. Firecrackers can kiss my butt...loud noises with no purpose?! STOP!!!!
As you can see, I've spent a significant amout of time stewing over this lately.
We're fairly new to our neighborhood and though our street looks fine, we have doubts about the streets around us. We hear loud booms every night and for weeks we thought it might be gunshots. We were all like "damn yo, we live in the hood". Turns out it's been fireworks all along. They even sell them in the WalMart here. I kind of liked the idea that it was gunshots. Made us seem more bad ass (stupid).
I hate those damn things. My husband used to use them to scare stray cats away. When I was a teen some jerk off threw one near me and it exploded by my ear. Could not hear for hours. So, yea I freaking hate those things.
My husband and kids went camping in PA recently, aka an experiment in sleep deprivation for the campers in their group. Non-stop fireworks and drunken domestic violence going on at the campsite directly next to theirs apparently because the campground was next to a firecracker stand, and a liquor store. (Only the best for us by God). My 6 year old came home all excited, "MAMA! I saw real live hillbillies! They never slept, and kept blowing stuff up and setting off rockets- we thought they were going to kill us! Plus they didn't have one single shirt and had never-come-off-tattoos!" Reason # 742 I am glad I opted to skip the trip- as nothing pisses me off more than never come off tattoos...
Water balloons.
I love fireworks. Even the loud ones.
What? I'm from Missouri.
But I love them on the Fourth. Or on the weekend of the Fourth. I do not love them for three weeks before and three weeks after the Fourth. I do not love them at three in the morning at any time. I also don't so much love careless people shooting bottle rockets directly into trees and other people's roofs and just generally setting fire to things that should not be set on fire.
So I suppose you could say I love fireworks in theory but often find them mindgratingly annoying in practice.