I KEPT WAITING TO FEEL 1976
Why America’s 250th birthday wasn’t my biggest disappointment, realizing what I’d lost was.
I knew something was wrong before the first firework ever went off.
I was sitting on my couch waiting for America’s 250th birthday celebration to begin when it hit me that I was looking forward to the whole thing about as much as a root canal. That wasn’t just disappointing. It honestly bothered me.
Hell, I’d been looking forward to this anniversary for years. Not in some obsessive, mark-the-calendar kind of way. I didn’t have a countdown clock on the refrigerator or an America 250 coffee mug sitting on the kitchen table. But every now and then it’d drift through my head, and I’d catch myself smiling.
America’s going to turn 250 while I’m still around to see it.
That’s going to be one hell of a birthday party.
That’s how I’d always pictured it.
Then June rolled around, and I kept waiting for the excitement to arrive with it. Every time another America 250 story drifted across my screen, I’d stop and read it. Another television special? Sure. Another interview? Fine. Every few days, I’d think, Maybe this is the one that’ll finally get me fired up.
It never did.
By the time the Fourth rolled around, I realized I wasn’t excited anymore—I was hoping to become excited, and that’s a hell of a thing to admit because those aren’t the same emotion. One happens naturally. The other feels like trying to talk yourself into having fun at a party after you’ve already decided you’d rather be home. I actually caught myself arguing with myself.
“Come on, Tom. Quit being such a cynical bastard. It’s your country’s 250th birthday. Light the damn fuse already.”
I wanted to. That’s the part I don’t think enough people understand. I wasn’t sitting there hoping the whole thing would bomb so I could write a sarcastic article afterward. Hell, if that had been my attitude, this piece would’ve been finished by breakfast. I’d have spent fifteen hundred words making fun of politicians, tossed in a Bastard’s Law, called everybody idiots, and gone on with my day.
Instead, I found myself rooting for the celebration. I wanted it to surprise me. I wanted it to shut up the cynical little voice that’s gotten louder as I’ve gotten older. I wanted to finish the night thinking, Well, you dumb son of a bitch...you almost missed something special.
About twenty minutes after the broadcast started, another thought wandered into my head, and once it got there, it refused to leave.
This doesn’t feel like America’s 250th birthday.
It feels like somebody’s trying to recruit me into a multi-level marketing scheme.
You know the feeling I’m talking about. Everybody’s smiling just a little too hard. Every sentence promises you’re witnessing something historic. Every five minutes you’re reminded how lucky you are to be there. After a while, you stop listening because your brain quietly starts looking for the nearest exit and wondering how long it’ll take before somebody asks you to buy the starter kit.
That’s when I finally understood what had been bothering me all month. The celebration wasn’t making me uncomfortable. The absence of anticipation was. I wasn’t rooting against America’s 250th birthday. I was rooting for it, and that realization bothered the hell out of me.
Join Me Every Morning.
By Sunday morning, I had stopped asking whether the celebration had been good or bad because that wasn’t the question anymore. The question that kept following me around the house was a lot simpler, and a lot more personal.
Why had I spent weeks trying to manufacture a feeling that used to show up all by itself?
I poured another cup of coffee, sat back down, and let my mind wander. It wandered exactly fifty years… 1976.
That’s when everything finally started making sense.
The funny thing is, I never realized I’d been carrying that year around with me until this week. Not the politics. Not the headlines. The feeling. Before anybody starts writing to tell me I’m looking at the Bicentennial through rose-colored glasses, let me save you the trouble. Nostalgia is a lying son of a bitch. It’ll convince you your first apartment had “character” instead of mold, your first car was dependable instead of a money pit, and every song on the radio was better simply because you were younger when you heard it.
I’m not trying to tell you America was better in 1976. It wasn’t. We’d just come through Watergate. Inflation was chewing people up. Plenty of Americans were convinced the country was headed straight to hell. Sound familiar? We argued about politics, complained about the economy, and worried about where the country was headed. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn’t remembering a perfect America.
I was remembering an America that knew how to look forward to something.
Walk into a department store that summer, and it looked like Uncle Sam had signed a six-month lease. Flags hung from the ceiling. Cardboard liberty bells filled the windows. There were commemorative plates, glasses, coffee mugs, books, coins, shirts, hats, belt buckles...if somebody could slap an eagle on it, somebody else figured they could sell a million of them. Looking back, half of that stuff probably would’ve fallen apart before Labor Day.
Who gave a shit?
Nobody bought it because it was valuable.
They bought it because they were already excited.
That’s the part people miss when they laugh about all the Bicentennial junk. They think the merchandise created the excitement. It didn’t. The excitement created the merchandise. Nobody had to invent anticipation because anticipation was already there. Companies weren’t manufacturing a feeling. They were cashing in on one.
The same thing was happening everywhere else. Television couldn’t stop talking about the Bicentennial because people wanted to watch. Schools had projects because kids wanted to be part of it. Churches planned celebrations. Civic clubs organized parades. Every town seemed determined to have the biggest fireworks show for fifty miles. It wasn’t one giant production trying to convince America that history was happening.
America already believed history was happening.
That’s the feeling I kept waiting for this year.
Not better fireworks, a bigger stage, or a slicker television production…
…The feeling.
Instead, I found myself watching a celebration that never seemed as big as the moment it was supposed to represent. I kept getting pulled out of it by little things. A section of the stage had already collapsed during rehearsal. Earlier events had power problems that shut down attractions while vendors stood there watching their ice cream melt in the July heat. Weather delays weren’t anybody’s fault, but by then, it all blended together into the same impression.
This felt like a production trying to catch up with history instead of history carrying the production.
Now, before somebody accuses me of nitpicking, let me say this. I’ve spent enough years around radio and television to know live events can go sideways in a heartbeat. Murphy’s Law has probably collected more production credits than most executive producers.
But you’ve got two hundred and fifty fucking years to plan a two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday party. If there was ever a day to empty the playbook, this was it.
The longer I watched, the more that damned multi-level marketing comparison refused to leave my head. You know those meetings where everybody keeps telling you you’re witnessing the opportunity of a lifetime? Every smile is just a little too big. Every sentence ends with an exclamation point. Every five minutes, somebody reminds you how lucky you are to be there. After a while, you stop listening because your bullshit detector starts asking a simple question.
If this is really that amazing...
Why do you have to keep telling me?
Real moments don’t need a sales pitch.
They walk into the room, take over the room, and leave people talking about them for years afterward.
If you’d like to help keep the receipts hot and the bullshit detector fully operational, you can buy me a tea.
I wish I could tell you I figured all of this out the moment the fireworks ended.
I didn’t.
For a couple of days, I kept telling myself I was writing an article about a disappointing celebration. I figured I’d spend a few paragraphs talking about production problems, take a couple of swings at the organizers, make fun of the MLM vibe, and call it a day.
Turns out I was writing about something else entirely. The story wasn’t on the stage. It was sitting on my couch before the celebration ever started.
That’s the part I couldn’t shake.
I wasn’t disappointed because America’s 250th birthday failed to entertain me. I was disappointed because I’d spent weeks waiting for somebody else to hand me a feeling I used to bring with me. That realization didn’t hit me all at once. It just sat there for a while, staring back at me until I finally admitted what it was trying to tell me.
When you’re nineteen, anticipation comes easily. Christmas. Concerts. Vacations. The first date with somebody you can’t stop thinking about. Even your country’s birthday. Half the fun is looking forward to it. The event almost becomes secondary because you’ve already been living it in your imagination for weeks before it ever arrives.
Somewhere along the way, I lost that.
Maybe we all did.
We’ve become world-class at sharing outrage. We can turn a ten-second video into a week-long national argument. We can spend days dissecting one politician’s sentence, another politician’s tweet, and manufacture enough anger to keep every cable news network fat and happy for another decade.
But shared anticipation?
That feels like it’s quietly disappeared.
Maybe that’s why this anniversary got under my skin so much. I wasn’t looking for a perfect production. I wasn’t looking for perfect politicians. Hell, I wasn’t even looking for a perfect celebration. I was looking for that feeling that made nineteen-year-old Tom walk into the summer of 1976 thinking, This is going to be something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
Instead, I found myself sitting on the couch trying to negotiate with my own emotions.
“Come on...maybe the next speech.”
“Maybe the fireworks.”
“Maybe now.”
Nothing.
And that’s when I finally understood what had been bothering me since before the Fourth even arrived. I wasn’t mourning America’s 250th birthday.
I was mourning the anticipation.
Because anticipation is really another word for hope. It’s believing something wonderful is just around the corner before anybody has to convince you of it. It doesn’t need a marketing campaign. It doesn’t need a slogan. It sure as hell doesn’t need somebody on a stage reminding you every five minutes that you’re witnessing history.
You just know.
That’s what I remembered from 1976. Not perfection, or politics.
Just anticipation.
Maybe that’s the thing worth fighting for over the next 250 years. Not finding a way to agree on everything—Lord knows that’s never going to happen—but finding a way to look forward to something together again.
Because I’d hate to think the next great American milestone is going to arrive with half the country cheering, the other half booing, and everybody going home remembering the argument instead of the occasion.
We’ve made it two hundred and fifty years.
I’d like to believe we’ve still got one more great birthday party left in us.
I keep coming back to the image of myself sitting on that couch before the first firework ever went off. I thought I was waiting for a celebration to begin.
What I was really waiting for was a feeling I’d assumed would still be there.
It wasn’t.
And I think that’s what I’ve really been mourning all along.
One Question Before You Go
When you look back on America’s 250th birthday a few years from now, what do you think you’ll remember more—the celebration itself, or the way it made you feel?
Join Me Every Morning.
Bastardonia Fact
The national motto of Bastardonia is: “We tried explaining it nicely.”
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