Gunshots or Fireworks? A Field Guide

Every household in this city keeps, somewhere in the back of its mind, a small internal chart. You do not remember making it. You made it anyway. It activates the instant something goes pop outside, and it renders a verdict before your coffee has cooled: fireworks. Probably. We're calling it fireworks.

Start with rhythm. Fireworks arrive in a bragging cadence: a build, a pause, a grand finale, applause from a stoop somewhere. They want you to know they cost money. They are trying to impress a cousin. Anything without showmanship, anything that just goes and stops, gets filed under “the car backfired,” because that is a nicer thing to believe on a Tuesday.

Consider the season. The Acoustics Bureau has determined that fireworks season runs from roughly Memorial Day through the Fourth, and also through New Year's, and also whenever the Eagles do literally anything, and also a random Wednesday in March for reasons known only to the man three doors down with the good connections.

Consider the sky. If, one beat later, the block lights up green and gold over the rowhomes and every kid on the street goes “ohhh,” congratulations, you have your answer and it is beautiful. If nothing lights up, you close the window, turn the TV up a little, and proceed directly to the final and most important diagnostic tool.

That tool is denial, and this city has mastered it. Denial is not cowardice; it is a civic art form, passed down, refined over generations of people who would simply rather it be fireworks. You text the group chat “fireworks right??” and three neighbors reply “fireworks” with the confidence of people who also very much want it to be fireworks. Motion carried.

In the morning the street is quiet and littered with the confetti of spent bottle rockets, which settles the matter retroactively. It was fireworks. That is the deal we've made down here, and honestly, most nights, it holds up.