"Fireballs of dissention"

     "Fireball" is one of those words that has a clear literal meaning — a ball of fire — but no obvious figurative uses. If I say someone is a "firecracker," it's obvious that I don't mean they're an exploding tube filled with gunpowder, but someone with a vivacious, sparkling personality.

     But who or what would a fireball be? The term does come up figuratively in baseball — pitchers with a very fast fastball as "fireballers." That's an exception, though.
     It isn't used very often. Myself, I only deploy the word in one setting, again very literally. We'll be on the highway, and a car will blow past us, weaving in and out. 

     "I'll drop back," I say to my wife, "and avoid the fireball."

     So it was odd on Sunday to encounter the word, not once, but twice, in independent situations. My Ohio friends and I were strolling on the beach at Put-in-Bay, and I noticed a pile of Sprite cans, along with a scattering of little single serving empties of Fireball, a gross cinnamon whiskey drunk by youngsters, the gustatorily challenged and emotionally immature.
     There are other products that use the term — Atomic Fireball candy, made by Chicago's own Ferrara, a reminder that the mushroom cloud rising up from an atomic bomb was called a fireball. Both share an unsubtle cinnamon connection, and I suppose giving it the "Fireball" moniker is an attempt to cover up its harshness with intentionality: it's supposed to taste this searingly bad.
     I wouldn't have given the word a second thought. But later in the day, my friend and I had to pop into his old wooden barn, and we looked in on his 1947 Buick convertible, which normally we ride around the island in, the cynosure of all. The old beauty been acting up, lately, and is in need of repairs.
     "Do you want to see the engine?" he asked — I didn't recall ever seeing the engine in the car before, and I've been riding in it since I was 17.
     "Sure!" I said. (Now that I think of it, I bought a new car in January, without ever popping the hood to look at the engine, and have not done so once since. I can't think of any kind of defense other than I assume it has one).

     He opened the massive hood as I thought of the relevant lines from Bruce Springsteen — "big old Buick" —and there, for the second time in an hour, was the word "Fireball" (which, upon reflection, is not the best name for a part of the car receiving gasoline).
     Seeking other uses, I consulted Wentworth and Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang and found "fireball" defined as, "An ambitious efficient, and fast worker; a very active person."
     Online, I noticed that the American Meteor Society defines "fireball" as "another term for a very bright meteor" and encourages readers to report any sightings back to the AMS, including as many details as possible, such as brightness, color and duration, for inclusion in their Fireball Sightings Log.

     In 1907, there was a "Fireball" racehorse, and "fireball" was used to describe an orb-shaped gas light, which were sometimes erected on a cement stand "to safeguard the boulevards and compel motorists to be careful." They were common enough on Chicago streets to be described as "familiar" — there were several on Michigan Avenue — and motorists complained about them.  

      My Oxford English Dictionary has mostly literal meanings: "A ball of fire or flame; applied esp. to certain large luminous meteors, and to lightning in a globular form." It traces "fireball" back to 1555, noting that it also describes balls of coal dust used to kindle fire, and includes a few figurative uses, such as this, from 1718: "At this Time there were Fire-Balls of Dissention flung all over the Kingdom."  

     That's certain evocative of the incendiary nature of dissent. Though doesn't it seem that, lately, dissent is not the exception, but the rule? We've become a society of complainers, objecters, arguing forcefully for whatever private individual phantasm holds us in thrall. It's been a while since anybody worried about our being a nation of sheep and, in all candor, a bit of conformity in any realm would be met with gratitude and relief.