If you want to be a hero to your 10-year-old son, really nothing beats standing out in the road shooting off illegal firecrackers and bottle rockets.
The drunks down the street were sending up some bigger ordnance, the kind that shoots up 60 or 70 feet on a plume of green sparks and makes a nice flower of white at the top. I felt inadequate for about 5 seconds. But they were too damn drunk to be shooting off fireworks, and so two of the rockets wound up headed down the street toward us.
Another way to be a hero to your 10-year-old son is, sadly, to scream "FLAMING ASSHOLES!" at the drunks down the street who are shooting off larger fireworks than yourself, and doing it badly.
Will is different about the fireworks this year. Last year he stayed in the grass and watched me light them. This year he had to take his turn to light them. So we went through the whole safety briefing: don't stand over them, hold the lighter away from your body, don't be a FLAMING ASSHOLE! It's been awhile since he just came right out and said, "I love you, Dad," like he did on the 4th.
I'm driving to the state line to get some more before his birthday.