Fireworks & False Memories

The 4th of July just passed and I haven't seen any fireworks yet except the lame ones the kids have lit off in the driveway.

That's all about to change Saturday night as we're going to see fireworks at Wadu Shuda Days.

I'm not sure what Wadu Shuda Days are or why they happen, but it's a pretty big rural small town event. Not as big of a deal as say a rural County Fair, but a close second.

There's fireworks, food, vendors, a band and since this is rural Wisconsin, lots & lots of beer to be consumed by lots & lots of people.

This year the band happens to be my favorite band to go see that's not famous, and they play great rock music from the 70's till now.

I'll also be going with Kris and Ashley & Scotty and Ashley's fiancé Jacob and that'll be a first for all of us and the night is sure to be memorable and I'm looking forward to it.

And the big plans we have for the rest of the weekend, which is an entirely different story which may or may not turn up here.

As the day gets closer and I get more excited about it, I was outside tonight with Scotty & Jacob watching them light off the lame-o fireworks. The firecrackers, there had to be at least 50 of them strung together and they started popping fast.

We ran like girls.

They went off so fast, we didn't even really get to see the show.

Running from it made a strobe effect in the dark and the kids looked like they were running in slow motion.

Though I missed seeing the firecrackers exploding for the most part, I thought that was a pretty cool memory to have and it again got me excited about Saturday night..

Which triggered me to think about fireworks events of the past.

I got these vivid memory flashes of 4th of July's gone by. Vivid.

When I was growing up in Appleton fireworks were ALWAYS on the 4th of July, no matter what day that fell on. Appleton always had a week long carnival at Pierce Park. It is a huge park and it would be packed full of rides, stuffed animal games, bands, food trucks with Elephant Ears, Sno-Cones, Italian Sausage and or Beef, Cotton Candy, popcorn, guys walking around selling hot peanuts and cashews, and other food vendors. It was a heavenly assault on the nose.

It was a good thing the carnival was a week long because it took that long to get a little of everything I liked!

Those carnivals are also the last I have ever seen with the tents with the mini-freak shows; the bearded lady, two-headed dude, things like that. I only ever went into one because my Aunt didn't want me to see anything gross, but I snuck in one and could tell instantly it was fake so I never went in again.

Pierce Park sits on a big hill above the Fox River below it. By the river there is a yacht club and another park.

Across the river and up hill again was Memorial Park (now gone). On the 4th everything at the carnival would stop at dusk as everyone proceeded to the south side of the hill where we would plop on the ground to watch the fireworks, which were shot off from Memorial Park and STILL came right above our heads.

When Randy & I were younger our Aunt Donna would take us, mostly because our Mom just had no patience for all those people and the lights and the noise. As we got older, we'd be there with friends, or with girlfriends or both and it was always a good time. Once in awhile an unresolved school-yard issue from the school year just ended could rear it's ugly head but for the most part, a good, relaxing , peaceful time.

So tonight while thinking I had very vivid memories of the lights & sounds, the rides, the fireworks, the throngs of people on the hill, a younger Donna & Randy, girlfriends with forgotten names, and the best junk food known to man.

The memories, as a motion picture in my mind had the feel of one of the old Country Time Lemonade commercials, the ones in the hot country sun, with the old guy and his white hair & glasses.

However I immediately realized that while I had these great memories of these great 4th of July's, they were bogus.

Without a doubt my memories of these events are false. Yet they exist.

There's not a single fireworks display I actually remember what it looked like. Or how a food tasted or a ride felt, or if my heart was pitter pattering over the girl I was with or I was wishing it was time to take her home.

Not one real memory.

But I have tons of memories of many 4th of July's!

All false.

As loud, obnoxious and absolute sensory overload as those events can be, we don't generally commit the details to memory. We're too busy being caught up in the moments to commit the moments to memory. So we have the memory, but make up the motion picture we see in our mind.

Makes you wonder; With all of that going on, if the details of your memory become a fictional version, what about all the memories we have of things that have occurred WITHOUT all the fanfare and hoopla? How much of our memory is reality and how much is illusion? Very interesting really.

It sure makes the spiritual concept of life being an illusion look like it has some evidence to support the theory. We may quite possibly create our own reality in the same way as our real memories are replaced by these illusionary images.

As RUSH said in Limelight: "All the world's indeed a stage and we are merely 
players, performers and portrayer, each another's audience, outside the gilded 
cage" The song seems to talk about everyone wanting to be in the limelight when in reality, they already are because we made it all up in our mind. We're already movie stars.

Maybe that's why they named that album "Moving Pictures"?

---

So this Saturday night while my family and I are enjoying ourselves at Wadu Shuda Days, there'll be no carnival rides, no where near as many different foods as the 4th of July week carnivals of my youth, definitely no mini-freak show and there won't be throngs of people on a hill watching fireworks in breathless delight.

What there will be is our family, the friends and acquaintances we'll run into, a great live band, lots & lots of beer to be consumed by lots & lots of people, and mini-throngs of people sitting by the river watching fireworks in breathless delight.

More importantly there will be a moment that I will be calm and relaxed and not too caught up in the moment to commit the moment to memory.

I will capture a detailed moment of one of the fireworks displays and see how long I can keep it without it changing from a real memory to a manufactured one.

Will I actually remember it down the road or will the only real part of the memory be that I was there with my family?

Time will tell.

And I'm definitely going to try to keep the real memory of Scotty and Jacob running like girls in front of me with slow motion strobe effect and the sound of our laughter as we ran away from the big scary firecrackers.