Kids, Don't Try This At Home

Every year around this time, the Consumer Product Safety Commission brings out a truckload of watermelons and mannequins along with a crate of all the illegal (fun) fireworks. Every local news station from around the country shows the footage of exploding produce and disintegrating PVC limbs ad nauseum along with terse warnings of "Kids, don't try this at home!" Don't try this at home? Even at 43, the inner teenager in me looks at this footage and says, "Cool! I wonder what would happen if I put two firecrackers in a watermelon?" This yearly pre-Independence Day ritual does nothing to discourage kids from wanting to play with illegal fireworks. Just the opposite. Exploding melons and mannequins don't put the fear of God into kids. I think we need to have the offending fireworks held in the hands of death row inmates or certain members of the Congress and then light 'em up. Now that would turn kids away from illegal fireworks! Or maybe not.