Life was more fun when we didn’t know what was good for us.

Or, more precisely, we liked it better when we didn’t know how bad our favorite stuff was for us: Big bad cars. Big bad bacon cheeseburgers. Big bad milk shakes. Big bad backyard fireworks displays on the Fourth of July.

The cars are killing the planet. The burgers and shakes are killing us. And last year’s fireworks started 518 fires statewide and caused $200,000 in damage.

They set off uncounted slow burns between neighbors who touched punk to fuse and those who stood outside clutching garden hoses. They panicked thousands of pets who didn’t know there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, from the noise and the lights.

Every year, they overload 911 call centers and put police and deputies on taxpayer-funded overtime.

This year in Tacoma they’ll attract the merry blue and red flashing lights of police cars bearing officers prepared to write up $257 fines.

They aren’t good for anything but thrills, cheers, choruses of oooohs, and the very image of what the Fourth of July is supposed to be.

So what’s a responsible parent to do? Sure, one could set ’em off when and where they’re legal, even if it means a trip to Firecracker Alley in the Tideflats. Or an ignition-free family could watch neighbors light up explosives that cost the same as a year at WSU. Or go to a public display and spend the rest of the night in traffic.

But are those options earnest enough? Are they good for us? Do they illuminate, without starting a fire on the shake roof? Do they improve the brain without endangering digits?

We are here to help with a list of alternatives, enhanced by our friends who are responsible parents and Fine, Upstanding Americans.

We have added a pinch of penance to them to atone for pyrotechnic transgressions of the past. We’ve spiced up the mix with ample self-righteousness.

Ideally, spending the Fourth with these activities should feel like being lactose-intolerant at an ice cream social.

 • Host a civics bee! Invite all the neighborhood kids to stand in a line outside in the hot sun. Pepper them with questions about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. When they fail, make them sit off to the side, in a haze of humiliation and barbecue smoke.

 • Gather the young ’uns around for a family reading of Tom Paine’s “Common Sense,” advised Nathe Lawver. Give props for the best rebel accents. Remind the kids that, after fomenting independence here, Paine spent time on the Bastille’s death row during France’s revolution.

 • Remind the kids that it’s Food Independence Day, when thousands of Facebook users have pledged to eat only items raised locally. Give them a lesson in garden responsibility by sending them out to weed the veggie plot. The kid who can make the longest line of morning glory roots wins her own trowel!

 • Announce the family’s independence from all things unhealthy. Inaugurate a policy of reading the ingredients on all packaged food, starting with the hot dogs the kids thought they were going to get for lunch. Invite the neighbors to forsake their barbecues and join you on a pilgrimage to see “Food, Inc.”

 • As long as you’re not going to eat that Jell-O anyway, Marguerite Richmond recommends using it for a Jell-O toss, the way her family used to. Caution: Marguerite might be having too much fun,

 • Draw your own fireworks. Have the kids design the explosions they’d most like to see. End with a contest in which they hold up their pictures and make the big bang sound effects to go with them. The winner gets a new box of crayons. Everyone else gets just a wee bit bitter.

 • Walk the neighborhood enforcing the U.S. Flag Code.

 • Come evening, equip the kids with squirt bottles, pails of sand and pretend ticket books and appoint them Junior Fireworks Marshals, prepared to douse and scold as needed.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com