Reply #122: Frankly, I don't know how I survived childhood alive. It's interesting [View All]

[struggle4progress]

to ask people what things they tried as children that led to narrow escapes, even if they didn't recognize the narrowness of the escape at the time

One fellow told me how, when he was in elementary school, he and his friends unwittingly made what was effectively a hand-grenade

He was a very smart guy, actually, maybe fifteen years older than me, and had a long successful career as a scientist before he reached retirement age

But in elementary school, he and his friends got to tinkering around with some easily available materials and constructed a little device that they thought would make a pleasing pop. If they'd all been a five or ten years older before getting this bright idea, they'd have shuddered and nixed the scheme. I won't tell you exactly what they did, for fear of inspiring some idiot surfing the internet

Anyway, they put their device into a garbage can: back then, around 1950, garbage cans were heavy galvanized steel, and as kids they assumed this would provide adequate protection. They detonated their invention, which disintegrated with a very loud bang -- and shrapnel from the device went in all directions, punching holes in the galvanized steel garbage can

He told me the story about twenty years after he had conducted that childhood experiment, and I think it still gave him the cold sweats to think what the result might have been if any of them had been hit in the face or neck or chest with some of that shrapnel. Fortunately, none of them was injured