The Blazing Advent of April

Tonight, when I got home, it was already dark, and the boys were in their room, all excited at the idea - real or semi-projected - that they had heard fireworks outside. I had driven the three miles from the highway to our house, stopping at a grocery store and a pharmacy, and I hadn't detected the faintest trace of "fireworks," but who know... Maybe they did hear fireworks somewhere in the distance. Of course, there are certainly alternative possibilities - especially since we live in a very "gun-friendly" hunting state (in Russian, "hunter" and "enthusiast' are nearly the same word, and that's how it is in our state as well). But I didn't bother to tell the boys that what they thought was "skyrockets in flight" might actually have been Smith and Wesson pointing at some furry creature in the woods...

But whatever they actually heard, I was especially moved by Ian's hypothesis as to the occasion behind the perceived fireworks in the night sky, on this, the 30th day of March, 2012: Ian speculated that perhaps the "fireworks" were being set off to celebrate the imminent arrival of the month of April, roughly 24 hours from now.

I double-checked the premise: were people celebrating April Fools' Day?

No. The theory was that perhaps the fireworks were a blazing celebration of the onset of April itself - the month.

At this point, Daniel pointed out that there is a girl in his Kindergarten class named April. While this might have been irrelevant to the fireworks topic, it seems breathtakingly more conversant with objective reality than Ian's own association of the new month with real-or-hypothetical fireworks.

In any case, I hope Ian's right about the idea that people in our town light fireworks to ring in the new month. If so, I imagine we might be treated to at least 12 such celebrations every year, in addition to the inevitable Fourth of July festivities.

Long Live April!

(March 30, 2012)