For ten wonderful summers long ago. I was the director of Cragged Mountain Farm, a beloved coed summer boarding camp for middle school and younger kids in Freedom, N.H. Every Fourth of July we’d have a picnic supper on an open field, where, just as the sun went down, we’d all lie down on our backs to watch the fireworks that the Freedom Fire Department several miles away shot up blosoming against the dark.

That was fine, very fine. But what’s the Fourth of July without our own firecrackers that we light ourselves? No way was I going to permit that. Somebody ultimately would get hurt. So every Fourth of July, I was just a tad unsatisfied. How to make the Fourth July something really to remember?

Hmm. Maybe make a complete ass of myself in front of everybody? That always works. Plus I didn’t have to change my behaviour a whole lot. So I pondered and lo and behold an idea arrived to my wearied brain: Put pillows betwwen butt and trousers. Then four or five packages of small firecrackers connected to each other between pillows and the cloth of jeans. Make sure the fuse protrudes so that an accomplice can light off.

My accomplice was the brilliant, fun loving Ernie Richardson, who at only age 19 was responsible for the maintainance of the whole campus. After the picnic supper but before it got fully dark, he and I went in to a building where no one could see him loading the pillows and firecrackers into the rear end the pair of oversized jeans I was wearing that I’d bought the day before. While performing this exceedingly important task, he informed me, as if I didn’t know, that I was going to have a very sore butt, but not to worry, my lovely wife, Joanna, would be the one who would apply the salve. What’s a few bliusters compared to that much fun?

Thus encumbered, I waddled back into the full view of the campers and walked up to where a visitor to the camp, a relative of a staffer, was standing. One look at him and I knew he didn’t get Cragged Mountain Farm. He was was wearing Bermuda shorts and those ridiculous long black socks hanging from a garter around his calves, like laundy hanging from a line, that men who didn’t know any better wore back then. He looked like a corporate executive who had forgotten to put on his suit.

I approached him, keeping my front, not my back visible to the campers, said “hello and welcome,” while Ernie, lit me off out of sight of the campers. Then while the fuse was burning down, Ernie casually walked away and I turned so my the back of me was visible to the campers. Then as I shook the visitor’s hand and started a conversation about the weather, the firecrackers went off, one by one, BANG BANG BANG while I just kept on talking. I could hear the laughter behind me over the noise.

Finally, after forever, the last firecracker went off and suddenly the only sound was the laughter and screams of delight. The visitor wasn’t laughing, though. The look on his face was a combination of derision, surprise, maybe even fear. “You’re nothing but a professional child!” he said.

“Thank you,” I blurted. “That’s the nicest compliment I’ve had in a long while.”

He just shook his head and walked away.

The next day one of the younger campers wrote a one-sentence postcard to her parents: “Yesterday Steve exploded.”