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Things that go Bang

30th December 2005
I absolutely loved fireworks when I was a kid growing up in New Zealand. The pretty flowery ones didn't interested me. What I loved were the ones we called Double-Happys, which were mini-sticks of dynamite about three centimeters long. You lit them, they went bang. Cool!

My friends and I would blow up anything we could find. A favorite game would involve putting a pack of sixteen into a cow pat. Everyone would gather around the cowpat and someone would light the fuse. The object of the game was to stay as long as possible. I've never seen the proverbial shit hit the fan, but I imagine the cowpat game would produce similar results...

A friend of mine called Paul Vujcich was the most safety conscious of us all and had purchased a pair of safety goggles. Sensible lad that. I decided to throw a double-happy at him to test out his goggles. While it was not my intention, the Double-Happy managed to lodge itself between his goggles and his eyes. Oops. He proceeded to whack himself in the head/goggles repeatedly to dislodge the cracker. The cracker came out just in time and exploded just below his head. He started checking his face to make sure all his bits were still there. He had, unfortunately, forgot about the double-happy in his hand that he had lit just prior to the one I threw at him. That too exploded near his face. We just fell about the place laughing our heads off. Paul didn't quite see the humor in it. Maybe he was a little dazed. Maybe he didn't see the irony in us laughing our heads off...

We had lots of lucky escapes like that. Some kids weren't so lucky. Every Guy Fawkes (the only time of year when you could buy them), you'd read stories in the paper about kids going deaf in one ear and losing eyes. Eventually parents go so concerned that way were banned all together.

There are no such bans here in The Philippines. You can buy double-happy equivalents, which I was just stoked about. Unfortunately the fuses on them were quite short and, at best, you had about half a second to get away. Which a) added to the fun because having one go off close to your hand is funny and b) subtracted from the fun because it got a bit dangerous.

I found some slightly smaller ones called Piccolos which had a much longer fuse on them. I blew up cigarette packets, ashes on the BBQ, bottle tops and piles of rice husks. All sorts of stuff really. Good stuff!

If I'd wanted to, I could of purchased crackers that were, at a guess, about one quarter the size of a stick of dynamite. When these go bang, they really go BANG. These seem just a little large to me though. I saw a picture in the paper of a kid who had lost a couple of fingers in a fireworks related incident. I'm sure there must of been some fireworks related deaths over the Christmas/New Year period.

Still, I enjoyed playing around with some crackers and being a bit silly with them. It brought back a lot of good memories from my childhood.

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(c) 2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
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