Sometimes when you’re a kid you get so sad about realizing something you don’t realize the adult(s) around you have been trying VERY hard to help you with that literal thing already. Its tough bein’ a kid. Everything you feel and do is so new.
I’ve had a similar effect with my niece, but not about negative emotions — it was about coding.
I’ve spent most of my life playing around with code, starting with GW-BASIC back before we had Windows. Only a hobbyist programmer, but enjoying it and trying to pass it on. I have six niephlings and tried my darndest to get even one of them interested in coding, but aside from toying around with Game Maker for a while, none of them ever cared.
And then I had my niece program one of the Christmas trees on the White House lawn that year they let kids do it (dunno if this has happened more than once), and suddenly she got into it and, like, studied it on Khan Academy or something. Great, finally one of them’s actually getting interested!
Next thing I know she’s explaining things to me (she might’ve been 11-14?) about the cool things she’s coded, and she goes: “You should really learn how to code!”
And I just had to grin and bear it.
(I submitted this to a site for amusing anecdotes, but their editors butchered the intro and made it a single paragraph without any breaks, and it wasn’t received well. Ah well.)
What they need to do is get one of those realistic dummies that have like the fake blood and innards and stuff and then blow it to pieces with their fish magic to show the kids how dangerous it can be.
You never met at least 20% of kids at my school, then. They were the type to be excited about going to see it, awed about seeing it, and leaving the auditorium wondering if they could recreate it in any way (living things not excluded).
Sure, I probably went to school with borderline sociopaths, but all it takes is for one to be “inspired”
Man, I don’t recall anything else about the surrounding details, but stuck in my brain is the knowledge that electricity will fry little wooden people to death and burn them all black. I recall it being a very effective demonstration put on by the PUD.
Ah, yes, right. Curse you, hindsight!
Sometimes when you’re a kid you get so sad about realizing something you don’t realize the adult(s) around you have been trying VERY hard to help you with that literal thing already. Its tough bein’ a kid. Everything you feel and do is so new.
I’ve had a similar effect with my niece, but not about negative emotions — it was about coding.
I’ve spent most of my life playing around with code, starting with GW-BASIC back before we had Windows. Only a hobbyist programmer, but enjoying it and trying to pass it on. I have six niephlings and tried my darndest to get even one of them interested in coding, but aside from toying around with Game Maker for a while, none of them ever cared.
And then I had my niece program one of the Christmas trees on the White House lawn that year they let kids do it (dunno if this has happened more than once), and suddenly she got into it and, like, studied it on Khan Academy or something. Great, finally one of them’s actually getting interested!
Next thing I know she’s explaining things to me (she might’ve been 11-14?) about the cool things she’s coded, and she goes: “You should really learn how to code!”
And I just had to grin and bear it.
(I submitted this to a site for amusing anecdotes, but their editors butchered the intro and made it a single paragraph without any breaks, and it wasn’t received well. Ah well.)
What they need to do is get one of those realistic dummies that have like the fake blood and innards and stuff and then blow it to pieces with their fish magic to show the kids how dangerous it can be.
You never met at least 20% of kids at my school, then. They were the type to be excited about going to see it, awed about seeing it, and leaving the auditorium wondering if they could recreate it in any way (living things not excluded).
Sure, I probably went to school with borderline sociopaths, but all it takes is for one to be “inspired”
Man, I don’t recall anything else about the surrounding details, but stuck in my brain is the knowledge that electricity will fry little wooden people to death and burn them all black. I recall it being a very effective demonstration put on by the PUD.