Dinner with geeks.
Last night my husband (#reallygeekyspouse) and I got together with some friends we hadn't seen in a long time. Eventually, the conversation rolled around to childhood risk-taking and experiences unique, I would say, to boys who grew up in a pre-911 world.
Remember those days?
Chemicals where easy to purchase from hardware and drug stores. Childhoods were highly unsupervised. Cities were smaller and children had access to space - not just parks with play structures designed for safety - but open fields, undeveloped expanses that were well out of the way of nosy adults.
It was a world that allowed problem-solving and risk-taking. Two of the dinner guests' teen years were dedicated to the task of perfecting explosive devices: homemade fireworks that sparkled with colour, canons, rockets and rocket launchers.
It was a world of experimentation, design, failure and redesign, problem -solving, close calls, trips by bicycle across the US border to acquire materials not available in Canada, and immense satisfaction when something finally worked.
All acknowledged the debt they owe to those experiences for their understanding of physics, chemistry and learning through trial and error. And all mourned the world we now live in where those kinds of opportunities are no longer available to young engineers in training.
November 18 Update:
The Young Engineers now have a place where they can use blowtorches and circular saws for their own purposes! Maker Kids
Hi I am a EDM 310 student at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed reading your blog and it holds a lot of truths that really touched home with me because I grew up in a small country town were I had a lot of space to do risky things as a child. Thank you so much for this blog post.
ReplyDeleteHi Micah, thanks for your comments. I'm glad the importance of doing risky things resonated with you.
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