Friday, July 04, 2008

Happy Fourth of July

I read through the Declaration of Independence this morning, something I don't remember reading in its entirety. The famous first paragraph I'd read and memorized of course, but I don't remember reading the full list of grievances against the British.

At this point in our history we have our own list of grievances but it's against our own government but all in all, I'm still thankful to live here.

Still, I sometimes wonder about the people celebrating next to me. A friend of mine and our kids went to the Fourth of July parade in Colchester today and instead of celebrating history, it was a study in greed and discontent. To our right was a family of six girls and whenever candy was in the vicinity the father called out, "Get it! Get it all!" Not only that, when five of the kids had gotten something and one hadn't, he told her "Go after him! Go get your candy!"

The mother of the girls was sitting behind us. There were a couple of race cars in the parade, the driver of first car revved his engine constantly. When a second one came by not revving his engine she screamed "Rev your engine!" He complied. She called out "That first guy spent more on 6 packs than spark plugs."

Sometimes I wish our founding fathers had included an amendment requiring basic courtesy.

Sam spent the entire parade waving the little flag he was given at the very beginning of the parade; he waved it with gusto! When we got home he decided that we should display the flag so we discussed some of the requirements to do this including the requirement that if the flag is outside at night, it needs to have a spotlight. Sam's solution? His book light!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that's perfectly acceptable, given the age of the person doing the displaying...haha. Too cute

Anonymous said...

I think the practice of throwing candy from parade floats and vehicles is horrible and should be discontinued. If someone wants to walk among the crowd and hand out candy, then do that.

Anne V said...

Beth, most of the candy here was handed out individually which was part of the problem. They didn't give to all the kids, they gave to the kids with their hands stretched out the furthest. Our kids weren't doing that so most of the time they were skipped when the kids on either side got candy. Truthfully that didn't break my heart since I didn't really want Sam to have the candy in the first place but I was still irritated with the parents pressuring the kids to make sure they got their share.