Family Secret

There was a secret I shared with my brother and sister for several years, one that we didn't dare divulge to our parents. We kept it to ourselves along with our friend that witness the fiery spectacle. He too, kept it to himself on what had transpired on that fateful muggy, early Miami evening. We kept our big fat mouths shut until one night we were celebrating mom's birthday. A coconut cake with blazing candles was set in front of her. One of the candles was superficially being supported by the cake's vanilla icing. It fell over as she blew the candles out.

"Oh boy," I commented, looking at the fallen candle. My siblings and our friend couldn't keep a straight face. My mom narrowed her eyes, "What are you guys up to?"

We exchanged nervous glances and I cleared my throat, "Well mom, do you remember the summer before I went into the Navy?"

**

'Twas a scorching summer, even by Miami standards. I was a high school graduate and my freedom was winding down; my US Navy adventure was looming over the horizon. I had few precious weeks of freedom left. It was used to visit the Wolf clan in North Carolina, dad would always use a visit like this as an excuse to stop at the one of many South Carolina firework stores on the way home; this year was no exception.

It was twilight-early evening in late July and we decided to have some explosive fun! We grabbed a few Roman candles we bought a few days before. We planted one in the ground, pointing it safely towards the street. The fuse was lit and we backed away before the first colorful explosive burst sailed into the humid South Florida sky.

It was followed by sister's frantic controlled, "Oh shoot!" that I can still hear it to this day. Newton's Third Law of Physics had taken over. The ground was still wet from a Miami Palmetto Pounder, the wet ground was too soft to handle the candle's recoil. It kicked back towards the front door of my parent's house. It fired again, a little fiery blue ball hit the center of the door.

BOOM! WHAM!

I had had horrible visions of it launching another shot, setting the door ablaze or it opening, allowing a fiery blast to set the inside of my parents house on fire or hitting one of my parents! We frantically rushed over to the Italian missile launcher, much to our horror it fired another colorful burst!

BOOM! WHAM!

Thank God the door remained closed; miraculously despite being hit twice, it didn't sport a single burn mark! We pointed the Roman candle back towards the safety of the street. A minute later the front door opened, my puzzled mom stood in the doorway and asked if one of us had knocked on the door. We shook our heads while looking at each other and said, "No."
Mom shook her head and said she could've sworn there was a knock at the door. She took one last look at the smoky front yard and shut the door. We nearly died of silent laughter as we held our splitting stomachs.

**

"Oh, so it was you guys," my mom dryly remarked as a big slice of coconut cake was place in front of her. She calmly picked up her fork and asked, "You know what they say?"

We cluelessly looked at her and then ourselves. We shook our heads, "No."

"There's no place like Rome..." promptly there was groaning along with a quadruple face palm as my mother impishly smiled at us.