GranolaBox

The hot shot chemistry teachers were at it again today. As part of their lesson about something chemical, they get to make awesomely loud explosions in the school courtyard. It scares the crap out of me, but the truth is that I have explosion envy. I love explosions.

Being a social studies teacher I don’t have much occasion to blow things up in class. The closest I came was last year when we had a civil war re-enactment out on the baseball field, and they blew off a few cannon blasts. It was really cool, but unfortunately that’s about all the kids remembered about the history they’d learned that afternoon.

My friend Jim used to hate it when they’d explode stuff. It made him jump three or so feet in the air and often spill his coffee. He also thought it might kind of freak people out in this post 9-11 and post-Columbine world. He complained to the science department and they started sending out warning e-mails.

Now that the chemistry teacher is the department chair and Jim has retired he’s dispensed with the warnings, and I’m fine with that.

I’ve always been fascinated with explosions. I probably better be careful how I word this so that the folks from the Department of Defense that visited my site after I wrote less-than-complimentary things about Tom Reynolds don’t get the wrong idea.

Back in 1982, when Queen and Bowie were the stuff of gods in my universe the video to Under Pressure went straight to my heart.

Two wives ago, I hung with a crowd that also appreciated explosions. The neighbors at her family’s cottage were getting a water line put in to their property and part of the work entailed some dynamite blasting by the water department to get the line through. They arranged for the blasting to happen on a weekend, and invited a slew of people and served martinis. Everyone cheered as the dynamite ripped open the bank of rocks.

In some ways I envied my brother’s job on an Army bomb squad. During training and field exercises they got to blow all kinds of stuff up. That was the fun part. Diffusing bombs was definitely a lot more stressful.

I think explosions, when nobody gets hurt, and fairly controlled, are good for the soul. It is with that in mind that when I died I wanted my ashes to be shot from a cannon somewhere. Then Hunter Thompson beat me to it and took all the romance out of it.

That’s okay. Being the incurable romantic that I am, I’m leaning more toward having my ashes sprinkled over the Queen of my Universe when she goes. I tried to convince her that few things could be more romantic than both of our ashes being blown from a cannon, but to no avail.

Filed under: General Observations on December 4th, 2007