It’s almost time for the official kick-off to summer, otherwise known as the Fourth of July! Pool parties! Cookouts! Parades! Mosquitos! Explosives! For parents, it’s probably one of the least relaxing holidays all year.

So how do we deal with this national holiday? With alcohol, obviously!

You’re familiar with alcohol, I’m sure. It’s that stuff you slam back when your neighbor wakes your toddler up nine nights in a row by setting off fireworks at 11 pm even though DUDE, JUNE ISN’T EVEN OVER YET.

If you need a little booze to get you through the day’s events, here’s a drinking game to really get you into the spirit of the holiday. Feel free to play with your friends!

• Your child refuses to wear the patriotic Fourth of July t-shirt you bought, even though this is the one day of their entire lives when the shirt will both fit them and be seasonally appropriate.

• Your child begs you please please pleeeeeeeeeeease for a sparkler, but all you have are some questionable ones left over in a flimsy box from last year.

• Your child, having finally received a sparkler, becomes completely paralyzed with terror the moment you light it.

• Your terrified child drops the sparkler, leaving a blazing hot piece of metal lost in the grass somewhere in the immediate vicinity of your bare feet.

• You have to chase somebody else’s kid away from the hot grill at a barbeque.

• There’s whining related to a hot dog with a black burnt part on it. “That’s a GRILL mark,” you try to explain. Your kid does not care.

• A fight breaks out over the last red popsicle.

• An entire plate of food falls on the ground because for some reason, kids insist on carrying paper plates at a 45-degree angle.

• Someone sheds tears over a pit in their watermelon.

• Your kid runs away before you can put sunscreen on both sides of his face.

• Someone engages you in an unsolicited conversation about all the chemicals in the bug repellent you just sprayed all over your kids.

• Someone brings up the Zika virus right after you or your kid just got bit by a mosquito.

• Your kids ask to play in the water, which means you have to go in there with them.

• In the middle of a parade, your kid asks if he can watch a show on his iPad.

• Your husband knows the “perfect spot” for watching the fireworks, but you need to park your car about 10 miles away and walk there carrying five folding beach chairs.

• When you get to the “perfect spot,” it appears every person on earth and their mother had the same exact spot picked and you can barely make room for your left foot, let alone five beach chairs.

• When you finally squeeze your chairs in (despite plenty of dirty looks from your neighbors), your child announces she has to pee (even though she swore up and down she went to the potty before you left) and the only available bathroom is a germ covered port-a-potty about five miles back.

• After you return from the potty, another fifteen restless minutes pass in pitch blackness as you wait to see a fireworks display that was supposed to start at dusk.

After all that, as soon as the first big fireworks boom finally goes off, your kid covers his ears, screams, “TOO LOUD!!!!” and declares he wants to go home.

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This post was written by Robyn Welling. To read more from Robyn, visit Hollow Tree Ventures.

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