A little learning between the bottle rockets and firecrackers

Happy Independence Day! Or Happy Fourth of July! Or Happy Sidewalk Egg Frying Day! Yes, that’s an actual thing! Whatever makes you happy! Like exclamation points!

I’m celebrating our nation’s independence today. Yes, just 241 years ago today, a group of men still wearing wigs after celebrating Pride Month got together in Philadelphia for a Phillies-Mets doubleheader. Between games, they got drunk and sent a bunch of angry tweets to King George III, or as the colonists hashtagged him, #CrazyGeorge.

Days later, Thomas Jefferson compiled some of the best tweets of the day into what he called the Declaration of Independence. This declaration got King George really mad when he heard about it on CNN during a five-minute respite from stories about Russia, so he tweeted that it was “#FakeNews, believe me.”

Only it wasn’t fake news, and that really made King George mad. So, he assembled his troops and told them to wear really loud red uniforms, play drums and electric guitar and line up to make it easier for the Continental Army to shoot them.

Still, it wasn’t easy for the Continental Army as they had to repeatedly shoot these Redcoats with muskets for the Second Amendment had yet to be invented, leaving them unable to enjoy access to high-capacity magazines. If we’d had the NRA back in 1776, we could have mowed down those neatly lined-up Redcoats and ended the war in a few minutes.

Fortunately, we colonists had a lot of help in beating the British. We talked Native Americans into helping us by promising that we always honor their heritage and never steal their land or cram them onto reservations in the middle of a wasteland only to denounce them later for living in poverty. “Whew,” the Native Americans said.

Then, we pulled the French into it by threatening to change the name of french fries to “freedom fries.” “Mon Dieu!” said the French, noting that the only people they hated more than uncouth Americans were the snotty British.

Then Paul Revere hopped on his four-wheeler and roared through the dirt roads of Boston, Georgia, screaming, “I seen some British folks!” He was totally ignored, so he started yelling “Revenuers!” and everybody grabbed their AR-15s, which they had amassed for deer hunting.

America was born, and we quickly became the leader of the free world — beating the other nations to the moon and then inventing things like the Snuggie — before slumping to about 19^th in most major measurements from education to health care to understanding yield signs and turn signals.

To celebrate this history, Americans will spend today waving flags, wearing red trucker caps and shouting “We’re No. 19 in many important categories!” before spending the early evening scaring their neighbor’s dog — a half-Bull Mastiff, half-Shih-Tzu called a Bull Shih-Tzu — with bottle rockets and firecrackers before winding down later with a cold PBR trying to remember how many fingers they started the day with.

Or, you could just go fry an egg on the sidewalk and celebrate that holiday instead. Unfortunately, I’m not as certain about the history of that holiday. I assume somebody was hungry.

This story was originally published July 3, 2017 at 12:02 PM with the headline "A little learning between the bottle rockets and firecrackers."