Why Kids do what kids do?

[Eagledad]

While reading the responses in this thread, I enjoyed thinking back in my days of watching M80s and Cherry Bombs blow up milk carton and gallon coffee cans to smithereens. To be fair, we were only trying to send the coffee can to the moon. Who knows, maybe the desire to build a can strong enough to withstand the thrust generated for a Cherry Bomb (1/4th stick dynamite) is what drove me to be an Aeronautical Engineer. Every December dad drove our family to Grandmas in Laurel Mississippi for Christmas. At that time, fireworks was a common way of celebrating Christmas and my cousin always took the time to show me the fine art of using fireworks in ways not advertised at the fireworks stand. One year just when we thought we had pushed our experiments to new frontiers, my dad presented us with a one inch pipe about 18 inches long that he and uncle Lee turned into a marble cannon sometime in the early 1940s. We fired a dozen marbles down the ally behind grandmas house that day. Never saw them land, never saw them again for that matter. At the time the cannon was made, my uncle was an Eagle. My dad was a 15 year old SM because that was during WWII when few adults were around to be a SM.

 

I actually thought the Polish cannon was real. I guess Im a bit naive, but I have personally shot potato and tennis ball cannons, so a Polish cannon seemed reasonable to me. I was waiting to read what it was and kind of thought it might fit the description of what dad made back in his teenage days. I guess sometimes we let our emotions get the best of us.

 

Barry

 

[Hunt]

Perhaps our views on this are partly shaped by both geographical and chronological context. For example, in my semi-rural hometown in the 1960's and 70's, I don't think this "pipe bomb" would have been considered all that big a deal if the boys were blowing up cans on the back 40 with it. It might have been considered a stupid, but not particularly criminal thing to do (although it was probably against the law even then). Heck, back then you could still get fireworks that were virtually bombs.

In a more urban context, and in today's context of terrorism concern (bordering on hysteria), we have a stronger need for boys to know that this kind of activity is totally unacceptable. (I would just note that depending on where you live, people may also have the same attitude of horror with respect to firearms.)