Christmas Fireworks 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This is not a story that can be nominated for a Darwin Award, just because I did not remove myself from the gene pool, but it was a near miss.
This story is a true telling of an event in my ill-spent youth when I was less apt to pay attention to details. I was 14 or 15 years old and it was a cold but clear Christmas day in the mid 1980’s. My family had finished opening all of their individual presents and we were all eyeing a large present under the tree addressed to the entire family from Santa.
y two younger brothers and I were given the honor of opening said present, so we proceeded to rip into it like children are wont to do. We discovered that it was full to the brim with fireworks of all types, bottle rockets, firecrackers, screamers, flowers, snakes, smoke bombs, (the small colored ones), and M-60s, (these look like miniature sticks of dynamite, or giant firecrackers.)
After securing all our other presents in our rooms we threw on our new winter coats that we had just gotten, grabbed the box of fireworks, and dragged it outside. We lived on a lake at the time, and our back yard ran down a hill to the lake, so we decided that we would stand on the top of this hill and shoot our fireworks out over the lake.
We decided we would be safe and leave the box of fireworks in the garage, just around the corner and about 20 feet from the spot where we were shooting. This went on for a bit and I got tired of running back and forth to the garage to get more, so on my next trip to the garage, I grabbed a few of the M-60s, a long string of firecrackers and a couple of packages of bottle rockets, and stuffed them all into the inside breast pocket of my new coat, so that it was near bursting.
We were using punks to light our fire works, these resemble long sticks of incense, which burn without a flame, leaving only a smoldering tip. (For those of you unfamiliar with them.)
I resumed happily shooting fireworks when I inadvertently reached into my inside breast pocket to get more fireworks, with the hand in which I was holding my pump. I did not even realize I had done it until I felt a sharp burning pain and a powerful WHUMP against my chest. I thought for a second that one of my brothers had fired a bottle rocket at me, but they were not paying any attention to me. I then realized that a bottle rocket had gone off in my coat!
I grabbed the front collar of my coat and pulled it out so I could look down to see what was happening, and there were sparks flying up out of my collar at my face. At that moment the long string of firecrackers ignited and started going off.
I grabbed at the zipper on the front of my coat and tried to unzip it but it had become stuck and would not unzip no matter how hard I pulled. I realized that the only way to remove the coat was to take it off over my head. During all of this, the inside of the coat was being ripped to shreds and was beginning to smolder, plus it was blowing and burning holes in the sweatshirt that I was wearing.
I whipped the coat over my head as quickly as I could, and had just gotten my arms out of the inside out sleeves, and thrown the coat to the ground, when the first M60 blew. I dove to the cold ground, which felt great against my burned chest. The M60 had blown a huge hole in the coat, which then started to burn profusely. As it burned, it cooked off all of the other M60s, which promptly blew the remainder into scraps of flaming cloth.
The burns on my chest were not bad, and my mother, who is a nurse, was able to dress them without having to take me to the emergency room. My parents were too amused for me to get into too much trouble, but I did have to buy myself a new coat with the Christmas money I had.
If the M60s had gone off while I was wearing the coat, or struggling to get it off, I would probably be a serious contender for a Darwin Award, but since this is unverifiable I just think it should serve as a warning and an amusing story.
Submitted on 12/30/2002
Submitted by:
Justice Lloyd
Reference:
Personal Account
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