If it’s July, this must be my annual windmill-tilting exercise.

Being completely neurotic and slightly unpatriotic, most years I attempt to convince my fellow Utahns that July is a month that would best be left to the British. Especially here in The Beehive State.

Thanks to a complete lack of coordination between our Founding Fathers and the Mormon pioneers, each July we end up with not one, but two holidays based on that unholy duo of parades and fireworks.

Parades. And. Fireworks.

RELATED: Northern Utah firework laws for when, where to celebrate

If there are two more classic examples of man’s inhumanity to man, one would be hard-pressed to name them. In terms of hours of your life that you never get back, the typical parade is right up there with opera and waiting at the DMV. But at least those things are fairly harmless.

Fireworks are another story.

If, as Zuzu’s teacher says, “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings,” then clearly every time you hear a firework pop, an angel loses them — and probably gets blown to bits in the process. Few things in life are as environmentally, socially and physically irresponsible as fireworks.

RELATED: Utah fire officials urge caution to prevent wildfires for July 4th weekend

It never ceases to amaze me, in this era of extreme product safety and helicopter parents, that we don’t think twice about handing a 4-year-old a white-hot wire of spitting, sparking metal and tell him to go run around on the lawn with it. Why not save yourself the money and trouble, and just give him a pair of sharp scissors?

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) offers a free, downloadable safety poster on its website advising parents to “Know the risks. Prevent the tragedies.” It shows an image of a young boy holding a sparkler, while a man with a welding helmet and torch lights the sparkler. The message: “Sparklers can burn at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot as a Blow Torch!”

Gotta say, as accurate as this poster may be, I’m not sure how effective it is. Because while most responsible parents would get the message of the inherent danger here, the vast majority of children — and, let’s face it, most guys — probably look at it and think, “Cool!”

And sparklers are just the tip of the pyrotechnical iceberg.

Last year, the CPSC conducted a study of fireworks injuries between June 19 and July 19, and the conclusions were quite telling. In the weeks surrounding the Independence Day holiday, an average of 260 people a day went to the emergency room with fireworks-related injuries. More than two-thirds of all fireworks injuries in 2015 were sustained in that same time period. And 11 people were killed — as in, dead — in 11 separate fireworks-related incidents.

The CPSC also broke down injuries by fireworks type:

• 24 percent of the total injuries were from sparklers

• 16 percent from firecrackers

• 10 percent from bottle rockets

• 9 percent from reloadable shells

• 5 percent from multiple tubes

• 4 percent from novelties

• 3 percent from Roman candles

• 1 percent from fountains

• 21 percent were the result of “unspecified products”

• 3 percent came from public displays.

As for the demographics of fireworks injuries, the majority (35 percent) were sustained by people between the ages of 25 and 44, followed by ages 15-19 (16 percent), ages 20-24 (12 percent), ages 5-9 (11 percent), ages 45-64 (10 percent), children under the age of 5 (8 percent), and ages 10-14 (7 percent).

Curiously, only 1 percent of all fireworks-related injuries were to people age 65 or older. Presumably because, by that age, all the really stupid people who tend to interact with things that explode had already been weeded out of the gene pool.

And, you know that whole debate about who’s smarter, man or woman? Well, by gender, 61 percent of the injured were male, while only 39 percent were female. What’s more, I’d be willing to bet that a guy was somehow involved in almost 100 percent of that 39 percent injury figure.

Women were more likely to be injured at public fireworks displays (usually run by guys, by the way), while men were most injured by firecrackers, sparklers, bottle rockets, novelty devices, Roman candles and reloadable shells. Basically, everything else.

Why can’t we all be more like New Jersey? Although everyone likes to make fun of it, the Garden State does get props for being one of only three places in the Union to actually ban all consumer fireworks — the other two being Massachusetts and something called “Delaware.”

“But Mark,” you say, “if we don’t get to play with our dangerous, toxic fireworks on the Fourth and 24th, what are we supposed to do with our July holidays?”

I’m glad you asked. One of my favorite things to do this time of year is Google “fireworks fail,” and watch a few of the videos. It’s environmentally friendly, it’s completely safe and it just might make you rethink the legality of fireworks in Utah.

Unless, of course, you’re a guy. In which case, you’re already thinking about ways to one-up the drunk guy with the bottle rocket sticking out of his plumber’s crack.

Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.