The only big “fear” that the kids really have is fireworks. They’re generally okay with a lot of traditional scary things – dark, spiders, snakes, lightning, etc. Fireworks, however, set them to screaming in fear. From a parent’s point of view, this is actually not too bad. I mean, fireworks are fairly easy to avoid.

The other weekend, however, I was caught by surprise. We were down at Disney, and had split up so that C could ride on the rocketships while his little brother rode the tea cups. Our plan was to meet back at the carousel.

What we didn’t count on was the Halloween fireworks. After the rocketship ride, as C and I were double-timing it to the carousel, fireworks exploded all around us. By “all around us”, I mean just that. For those that know Disney, we were behind the castle, moving from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland (by the Winnie The Pooh ride). We had the castle on our left, and the back of the park on our right. The fireworks were going off in both locations. They were literally all around us.

360 degrees of boom.

Everyone jumped, including me. Since C was on my shoulders, he had himself a good bounce. I tried to cover my surprised hop by giving a quick spin. After that, I tried to stay relaxed and waited for the wail.

Amazingly, it didn’t come. Instead, he cried out “Hey, I’m not scared any more!”

I shouted “Hooray!” and asked if he wanted to come down off my shoulders. He didn’t, so I continued walking slowly through the crowd, both appreciating the fireworks and looking for J. As we moved, C maintained a running commentary.  It sounded something like this.

Boom. “Wow!”
Boom, boom. “Cool!”
Boom, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, pop. “Oh My Goodness!”
Boom – skreeeeee! “These are my favorites!”
BOOM BOOM “Okay, let’s go now.”
Boom “Wow!”
Boom, boom “These are so cool!”
Boom “Okay, let’s go now.”
Whistle, boom “Wow!”
ba-boom, fizzle, fizzle. “I love these!”

Each time he said “Okay, let’s go now,” I swerved from my searching towards a building. Each time, he went back to saying “cool!” before I made it there – causing me to swerve back towards the carousel and my searching. The end result was me twisting and turning my way through a huge crowd of people, with C on my shoulders and fireworks bursting all around us.

I can only imagine what he’s going to remember in ten years. I bet he’ll think he was on some sort of an amusement park ride that was filled with fireworks.

In a way, I guess he was.