This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

I've always preferred to watch fireworks from a distance of several miles, for two reasons. The first is that the first and then the second of the houses I grew up in were/are somewhat far from urban centers, and both were/are close to places where it's possible to see a lot of the SF bay area at once, which makes for interesting quantity-over-quality July 4th fireworks experiences and that's what I've gotten used to by this point. The second is that, also when I was growing up, I was told that the reason one of my Uncles' hands has a number of fingers better suited to dressing up as a character from The Simpsons than delicate manual tasks was that when he was around my age (at the time) he had shown a less than advisable amount of care in a brief foray into amateur firework-handling. As far as I know, the precedent of the second reason did not contribute to the institution of the first. Also, I'm not scared of fireworks or anything, I just always end up being surprised at how loud they are whenever I happen to be near one.