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Originally Posted by AlpineWhite_SJ
We preferred to dig out the powder in fireworks and use an improvised tennis ball with a hole in it as a grenade and stick the leftover fuses in it to light it. That and lighting the flower fireworks and kicking them into the pool. They still go crazy underwater 
Bottle rockets could be shoulder launched with some PVC piping.
Friend’s dad gave him a realistic looking metal gun that had a pellet flare attachment. We could launch those 100s of feet in the air because on 4th of July they lived close enough to a city fireworks show that they ghetto bird couldn’t get close to figure out where it was coming from.
CO2 BB gun wars and even the occasional spring based Daisy rifle. Higher FPS stuff was reserved for scoped killing of action figures from across the yard. |
These kids are missing out!! And I forgot all about action figures. I mean the 12 inch GI Joe's, not the little 8 inch ones made later. We had the helicopters, the bases, the jeeps...all our parents would allow us to purchase. A trip to K-Mart, Woolworth or TG&Y was a trip to heaven!
Quote:
Originally Posted by pennsiveguy
Yeah, just tinkering and fixing and tweaking stuff was/is second nature for guys of our generation. I was sent out to mow the lawn at about 12 or 13 and was pissed that it took so long. I took the muffler off the old 2-cycle Lawn Boy and saw that the exhaust port was about 75% clogged. Got that cleared up, and the mower had at least double the power and was actually fun to use. Next week I rebuilt the carb and got another big gain. The need or impulse to do that is completely natural for me.
But to today's generation, they've been taught that "you don't know anything about that" or "only an expert can fix that sort of thing, and you're not an expert" and they've given up. There's no escaping the fact that the increasing complexity of the world means that we're all experts in an increasingly smaller chunk of it. But that's no excuse to withdraw into helplessness. Don't even get me started about the intellectual tyranny of academia and the helplessness and docility they've so diligently cultivated.
My ex's 20-something sons - both very high IQ academic superstars (older one started his freshman year at Northwestern at the age of 16) and very successful in their fields - have no sense of agency or confidence regarding fixing anything or solving problems that aren't in their fields of study or wheelhouses. On a visit to them a couple of years ago I had to show the older son - a partner at a big international law firm - how a C13/C14 PC power cord was compatible with a large variety of other appliances/devices, not just the one it came with; I found this to be mind-boggling, even given that he's an Apple fanboy and has never owned a device that wasn't a Macbook or an iPhone. If his Volvo didn't start tomorrow morning and the SA at the dealership told him it was caused by the license plate frame being out-of-square, he would 100% believe it. Very sad and depressing. It's really pervasive. Kids have been indoctrinated to mistrust their own intellect and creativity.
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So effing true!!
This has been a point I try to imbue my daughter with. It's not simply enough to know HOW to operate a tool or instrument or device but WHY you would use it and HOW it works. This greatly reduces the chances of being cheated on with respect to repairs and other interactions. I'm proud that when she was in HS and through college, when was the "car guy" with her friends.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlpineWhite_SJ
This is why I don’t totally believe screen time is bad for kids. My kids watch Kids YouTube like crazy and learn all sorts of things like how to draw, make stuff or generally find a step by step guide for something they’re interested in. It’s not all crap online..
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A valid point about screen time.
Cheers-MK