#fiberglassing

It only then occured to me that most children don’t grow up melting styrofoam in acetone for fun! 

The thing about growing up with a fiberglassing business in the back yard, and no employees but family, you end up playing there. Add in the farm surrounded it, the boat at the river, the woods, my parents’ scientific interests and gear, and my family’s relaxed attitude to child safety that amounted to “they have good sense, they’ll be careful” ** and you end up with kids that think risky stuff is just fun every day life. 

I forget what other people haven’t done, or what others consider dangerous. I’m so sorry for kids trapped in scheduled and ultra safe lives. I would have been bored out of my mind, and the one thing I never was was bored! ***

**Which actually was pretty true. Neither my brother or I broke any bones or visited a hospital emergency room for an accident. Which is why I am so darn annoyed about the machete incident the other day. I was more careful when I used a machete as a little girl than I was when I cut my fool self this week!

From the stash

Pop and granddaddy building our big boat back in the 1960′s. I dunno if they were working on the hull or climbing up in into it to work. As you can see, there is a good reason we always just called it “the big boat” and they had to build a huge barn to construct it. 

Hey, I know that tall rickety wooden ladder! I uses to use it to climb up to the platform that had a built in ladder to the rafters. I’d dare myself out there and swing on the metal cables hanging down. The ladder scared me more than the rest, since it had a couple cracked rungs by then.