"Cuz I'm T-N-T, I'm dyn-o-mite..."

Last night was a singular experience, as well as a thoroughly atypical Independence Day holiday.

I put my hands on several hundred dollars' worth of fireworks and didn't get to light a one.

My friend Mike works at a fireworks warehouse during his holidays from school. He said they were understaffed for the holiday rush, and wanted to know if I would come in to help out.

And, like Holly Golightly, I agreed, for the sheer fact that I'd never done that before.

So for five hours, I hawked fireworks in a warehouse.

(Actually, I did have an ulterior motive. Mike is a buddy from high school that I usually hang out with every summer and winter, when he's home from school. However, lately, I haven't been able to hang out with him, with so much activity going on in my life. I realized the other day that if I was going to ask him to help me move at the end of the month, I'd need to make time to hang out with him a bit first. As such, this opportunity provided not only time to say hi, but also a nice quid-pro-quo set-up to cinch his cooperation in OPERATION MOVE-DAVE on the 30th.)

It was actually pretty entertaining. You can spot right off which kids will use these explosive gifts for evil instead of good. The ones who won't look you right in the eye, and won't smile at all. The ones scared of getting questioned, getting caught. Ah, youth!

Then there are the guys in their thirties who are pooling their money to buy the PRO 4 artillery shell set with 48 rounds of single, double, and triple explosions (sale-priced at around $140). All in all, they dropped close to $300 for fireworks. And not a single one had a kid with them.

I was lucky to get a string of Black-Cats and a couple bundles of bottle-rockets.

I will admit, the excitement of so many kids was infectious, and by the end of the evening, I nearly asked to be paid in merchandise.

So all told, an unusual holiday, but well worth the six bucks an hour I got for it.