“I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work.”

— Neil Armstrong

Here is a question for you — ever have a run-in with one of those people that aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer?

You know, the kind of person where the wheel is spinning but the hamster’s dead? They’re just not playing with a full deck, or they simply don’t quite have enough sandwiches for a picnic?

This is the situation I was caught in on the Fourth of July last year.

I was at Wal-Mart when this lady ahead of me was writing out a check and turned to the cashier, and in all seriousness, asked her what the date was.

The cashier blinked and flashed a quick smile until she realized that the lady wasn’t joking; she really didn’t know.

Now I will admit that Thanksgiving, Easter, and Labor Day can be a little tricky because they all take a little figuring out as to what day they fall on but you would think that the fourth of July would be pretty self-explanatory. I mean it’s not like it would be held on the fifth?! In fact, the date is the holiday.

But, you know, I can’t make too much fun of her. Well, actually I could ... but instead, I’ll just point out that we all have those moments in life when our brains decide to take a vacation. Oh yes, yours truly has had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing a bit of brain loss.

And while the lady at the store got hers out of the way in the morning, mine came later that night when I got the chance to see some fireworks.

I was sitting with my friends and we were watching a quick display that got an early finale due to rain, but the moment of ignorance came just about two minutes in when the big bursts started going off and I turned to my friend and said “Wow, did you see that?”

I was faced with a blank stare just like the cashier had and I realized to myself that the question dropped my IQ about 30 points.

Of course he saw that!

How could he have missed seeing the big multi-colored crackling explosions taking place just a few hundred feet above our heads?

And if the sparkling kaleidoscope wasn’t any indication, I’m sure the sonic boom that followed each one would have been a pretty good indicator that something was amiss. So yes, he saw it.

The only hard part about a situation like this is knowing that once you go down the road of stupidity, it’s sort of hard to turn the car around without admitting that you pulled away, while your brain was still standing on the curb.

It was a minor mistake and was forgotten quickly but perhaps this can be a lesson to us all. No matter how smart we might think we are, there will always come a time when the brain and the mouth will celebrate their own Independence Day. But hopefully not from each other.

Auburn native Bradley Molloy’s column appears here each

Sunday. He can be reached at

lovonian@hotmail.com