Laying claim to Kashmir didn't take nearly long as I expected it to yesterday.  Just a few brief emails to the Powers That Be, in fact, and I was done. 
     That left me with the entire rest of the evening to do whatever I wanted.  I suppose I could have been selfish and spent my time eating, drinking, and practicing signing my name to prize checks from Publishers Clearing House, as I so often do, but I didn't.  Instead, I gave freely of myself and took my spell checker out to see the fireworks.
     Not that we actually went very far.  In truth, we got no farther than my back yard.  There's a car in the garage, but I don't drive, and given the heat wave we've been having, I didn't feel like walking much, either - especially not with a spell checker perched atop my shoulders.
     "He doesn't drive?!" I can hear the FBI people monitoring this site asking each other.
     No, I don't drive.  I used to, but my sudden braking for every ant I was about to run over made for a pretty rocky ride.
     "He could see the ants on the road as he was speeding along?!"
     No, of course not.  I could hear them screaming.
     Anyway, having a car in the garage was of no use to me last night.  I thought we might be able to catch a glimpse of some pyrotechnics from my back yard all the same.  
     Alas, things in my life can never be so simple.
     First I had to disentangle my spell checker's code from the rest of the programming on my hard drive.
     Then I had to hunt around for the instruction booklet for how to operate my back storm door.
     Then - and only then - did the real fun begin.
     "BRANK!" my back storm door branked as I accidentally sprung its automatic closer.
     "BRINK! BRONCO! BRAN! BRAND! BANK! BARK! BLANK!" my spell checker screeched into my ears in rapid-fire succession.
     "Hey, come on now - take it easy," I chided my overly excitable guest.  "It's a holiday evening.  You're off-duty.  Try to relax, ok?"
     It didn't reply, probably because it was too busy squirming exactly like the 2-year-old software it was.  I manually closed the door and walked a couple paces out into my lawn, hoping that the gathering gloom there might help us get into the spirit of things.
     "Crecket... Crecket... Crecket..." a small insect greeted us from somewhere beneath the grass.
     "It's 'Cricket!' motherfucker - GET IT RIGHT!" my spell checker exploded.
     I wanly waved to the neighbors in the distance suddenly looking at me then turned my attention to other matters.
     "You yell another off-color phrase like that and I'm going to slap you back onto that hard drive so fast, it'll take you a week to sort your bits from your bytes," I told my guest in a low but deadly tone of voice.  
     "You don't need a hyphen in 'off-color'," my spell checker reminded me.  "How many times do I have to tell you that you use way too many hyphens - hmmm?"
     "Will you relax?" I urged it.  "Come on now.  It's no wonder you have trouble picking up cute foreign phrases when you have the attitude you do.  Chill out!"
     In the ensuing silence it was hard to tell if my guest was relaxing or trying to decide whether or not to flag "chill out" as slang.  As luck would have it, events soon made the issue moot.
     "Boooom!" the distant sounds of the first mortar-propelled starburst came to us.
     "Boom! Boob! Book! Boon! Boor! Boos! Boot! Bosom!" ripped through the air around my poor head with such ferocity that I almost fell over into the coneflowers.
     "Listen you little pedantic boor, you!" I wheeled and screamed.  "'Boooom!' is the traditional July 4th sound of a rocket going up.  It is not going to be replaced by 'Boob!' or even 'Boooob!' - not now, not ever!  Got it?!"
     "Oooooo!" voices in the distance seemed to be reacting to my stern words.
     "Oop!  Oh!" my little friend attempted to argue with them, ignoring me entirely.
     "'Oop!'?" I exclaimed in amazement.  "A beautiful rocket goes up in celebration of over 200 years of American freedom and you want the crowds to let out an 'Oop!'?"
     "Hey - insert another comma in that sentence and insert it now!" little Miss Grammar Check yelled at me from the open back door.
     "Ahhhhhhh!" came the faraway reply of the crowds.  Mine, I'm afraid, is unfit for posting even on the Internet.
     "Ha! AHF!" my spell checker replied to the crowd, not missing a beat.
     "'AHF'?!"
     "Antihemophilic factor," my spell checker explained in exasperation.  "I'd tell you more, but you just wouldn't understand."
     "Oh, now THERE'S something we want to teach our kids to yell when the bombs are bursting in air!" I sputtered.
     "BRANK!" Little Miss Grammar Check slammed the back door shut in sympathy with the fiend on my back.
     "That's it!  I'm OUTA HERE!" I let everyone within 4 miles know, then stomped off into my house.
     "Out! Outer! Outs!" my spell checker giggled out behind my back.
     "People!" Miss Grammar Check whispered out the window to my spell check as she rolled her 1's and 0's - just before I kicked her code the hell out of my way and began eating, drinking, and practicing signing my name to prize checks from Publishers Clearing House like there was no tomorrow.

     As it turns out, there will be no more tomorrows for my spell checker.  I was all ready to forgive and forget when I went out this morning to check on it but what I found brought me up short.
     The thing had actually taken over every blade of grass there was out there and was charging the insects exorbitant prices to download a single munch.
     Damn those Microsoft programs!
     From now on, July 5th will be considered the first day of my independence from the lot of 'em!