Poppy New Year!!!

#55: Like Microwave Popcorn for Wishes

New Year went by without much fanfare this time. My brother wasn't home so there's one less person to celebrate the holiday with. It seems like our family gets smaller and smaller each year.

I remember the time New Year's Eve meant lots of firecrackers and lots of fire-cracker-throwing with cousins and neighbors. Who cares if Watusis were dangerous? They danced and they flew so you could very well throw one at the person nearest you. Of course there were also times before when, with our uncle or one of our neighbor's uncles or drivers, we'd concoct our own homemade explosives. That silvery powder was pretty fun to play around with. That is, until my brother burned his eyelashes and eyebrows out and almost ended up blind. For more than a month, he looked like a worm. (Why worm? Has anyone of you seen worms with eyebrows?) Not only that, he could see flashes of light from time to time. I think that affected his reading abilities and pulled down his grades in school. (Or maybe it just annoyed his teacher that he kept on blinking in class.)

Well, the celebration now is not as exciting. No more uncles or cousins or macho firecracker cookers. It was just the three of us plus our helper, Tina, who dreaded having to go to the middle of the street to light up fountains. (Yes, fountains. The most harmless of them all.) She would run and scream going back to the house after lighting one. And it was like that for 12 times or so. After her 9th try, I attempted to help her out by carrying the firecrackers. 3 of them left. One had the label, "Long Life," the other one, "Happiness," and the third one, "Love."

I'm not Chinese and I don't believe that these things bring what their cheap packaging promised but I handed them over to our official lighter-upper anyway. She ran screaming back to our house again. I had my picture taken as the the fountain danced and popped with many different colors. Who doesn't want Long Life, Happiness and Love anyway?