It’s my younger kid’s birthday, and the city is going to put on a fireworks show!

I stopped teaching during summers, thank goodness. But when I did teach a summer class, I would always announce the upcoming Fourth of July holiday with something like this:

“My kid’s birthday is Thursday. I wrote to the president and asked if he’d proclaim it a national holiday. He said yes! So there will be no class on Thursday!”

There was almost always at least one student who said some version of, “You can do that?”

Happy birthday to The Younger!

And happy birthday to America—however complicated my feelings about you are right now.