Acrid wisps of smoke rose slowly from the firecrackers set off by small children. Powerful crackling sounds filled the still May air. The precise location of this spectacle was outside my room.
I rose up to admonish them some, but the face of one of the children stopped me before I had the chance to let out a powerful verbal volley. It was an innocent smile, even beatific.
I had to hold back my exasperation at having my reverie disturbed. But was that the only reason I held back? This thought began to melt into my placid calm and soon I was struggling with an anxiety of sorts.
Why, didn’t I pull such pranks in the past when I was their age? Boy, I was worse in fact when it came to such antics. I would light up crackers under my neighbour’s window.
Just for the heck of it! To intensify my adrenaline rush, I would wait for him to make a dash for the window under which the puckish act was playing out and holler at his little culprit.
It was an act of brazen insolence, all right. The present kid was doing all this with the least bit of intention to break my reverie or anyone’s. He was smiling his wide smile at hisses and crackles and smoke trails.
I finally reasoned that he had just begun to subsume the whole idea of festivity into his psyche. It starts with solid, hard sounds after all.
The sound of firecrackers popping. Just as it had started for me. It would be long before the more abstract and solemn states of manhood are foregrounded and the raw exuberance of childhood finally trails off into the dense smokescreen of time.
Just like the blue trail of smoke from the firecrackers had trailed off. He would probably then be occupied in a reverie of his own and some new kid outside might be setting off firecrackers outside his room. Life’s like that.
The writer is a civil engineer.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.