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Tuesday, July 5, 3:46 a.m. — I'm wearing my jams and standing on the porch of a neighbor, trying to decide if I should ring the doorbell.

The night is cool and redolent of gunpowder from all the Independence Day celebrating. Off in the distance I can still hear faint pops from diehards.

The neighbor's house is dark. I have a pretty good idea that they're all asleep inside. I put my finger on the doorbell and pause a final time, envisioning how the conversation will go when Ernie staggers blearily to the door.

Ernie: "Kirb? It's almost 4. What's going on?"

Me: "Oh, I noticed that you stopped setting off your fireworks two hours ago. I wanted to make sure everything is OK?"

Ernie: "What? Dude, we were asleep."

Me: "Yeah, so was I three hours ago."

By then, the entire Ernie household would be awake. The dogs are barking, and Ernie is yelling at them to shut up. Slowly gathering his wits, he realizes that this is a payback visit.

Him: "C'mon, man. It's just once a year."

Me: "No, it's not. It's Independence Day, Pioneer Day, Herriman Days, and four or five days either side of each of those days."

Ernie launches into our neighbor noise history, bringing up the subject of my cannons. He points out the time I shot a flaming stuffed bear into his aspen trees, and the time I gave his sister's dog a nervous breakdown.

I counter with the fact that I have the courtesy to send out gang emails to all the neighbors at least an hour before I set off anything big. Also, the bear didn't burn anything important, and the dog was no bigger than a radish and, therefore, entirely useless.

Ernie: "But we never called the cops on you. Not even once."

Me: "I'm not calling the cops now. I'm just here to see if you're OK, and to remind you that fireworks are supposed to end at 11 p.m."

The conversation degenerates to the point where Ernie's kids will be hiding in the hallway, and his wife will be thinking of calling the police because her husband and I have entered the realm of stupid threats.

Ern offers to throw me into the street, which we both know he can do. I mention the possibility of a bowling ball going clear through his new truck, another claim we're both aware is a distinct possibility.

The argument, as I imagine it, will then wander into which of us is the worst offender of the law, the least liked person in the neighborhood, and who the cops will most likely take to jail if someone calls them.

None of that has happened yet because it's now 3:48 a.m. and I'm still standing on the porch with my finger on Ernie's doorbell. Was I really annoyed enough to go through all of that over a few hours of lost sleep?

Indignation said I was. Self-preservation said I wasn't. But Ern's wife is smarter than he is, and it suddenly occurred to me that she wouldn't call the cops. She'd call my wife.

I looked down at the list in my hand containing four more doorbells I wanted to ring before dawn. I'd never get through them all before my wife showed up.

The only person who would get in any real trouble would be me. That didn't seem quite fair, but since there's no such thing as fair, I took my finger off the doorbell.

Better to let sleeping idiots lie. I went home and got back into bed.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.