When we were teenagers, sitting on a park bench one 4th of July, there was another small group of kids setting off fireworks nearby. One of them tried to kill himself.
I was sitting with a large radio on my lap, when a fat kid with no shirt came right in front of us, said he didn’t want to live anymore, lit an m80 and placed it under his left chest (which he could do because he was fat).
I leaned back and held the radio up while my friend Robert did a dropkick on the guy’s chest, he fell back and the firework exploded some feet way from him. Then he stood up, cried out and ran off.
Was one of the most crazy things I ever saw.
We used to toss big firecrackers in 55 gallon steel barrels out in the alleys. People burned their trash/garbage in them.
Maybe they were M-80s but my cousins, brother and I called them ‘ashcans’, prolly because there would be a very satisfactory WHOOMPF! sound when it exploded, a column of smoke from the barrel and an angry home owner chasing us away.
I can see how one might blow a fat kid’s ‘moob’ clean off.