E. Boyer
When I was growing up, we built rockets. We would spend our weekends in pleasant-weather months collecting balsa wood scraps, paint and sundry other items and constructing the most elaborate hodge-podge of model rockets.We would all gather in the field just below our elementary school and from sun-up to sun-down, watch with anticipation as we took turns launching them into the sky, marveling whenever a plain, unassuming model would reach greater heights than all the others. Yes, there was a time when kids could walk into the local Woolworths and buy explosives – firecrackers, Cherry Bombs, Piccolo Petes, Roman Candles, Jumbo Magic Snakes, Ground Spinners, Repeaters and Mega Sparklers, all with nary a glance from the checkout clerk. Indeed, a thing of the past.
We weren't very well put out back then. At best we were a homely but congenial pack and no one knew us outside of our miniscule circle of family and friends. We were insignificant. But, during those rocket-launching afternoons, we were famous!
Unless you grew up on the rural outskirts, you may not be aware that staking claim on the abandoned fort in the woods of the previous year's graduating class was a coveted rite of passage...think of it as a fraternity/sorority house take-over for the underprivileged. And as children without electronic devices did back in those days, we would re-tell the day's events in such a fort. The stories would often become exaggerated, with bigger explosives and higher heights and our imaginations knew no bounds...we lived in city apartments with important books stacked floor to ceiling, we stood in front of classrooms and talked about important things, we built futuristic cars, we became doctors and cured everyone, we wrote books and we went to the moon. After all, we built rockets and launched them high into the sky...certainly, we could do anything. Such was our dream-soaked childhood.
I don't think kids these days are building forts in the woods, or buying explosives at Woolworths, but according to an article I read in the Post, they are building "hovercrafts." Yes...from scraps and ingenuity, Piedmont Middle School students achieved actual lift-off a few weeks ago on a San Mateo school blacktop in the world's largest Maker Faire. I hope when they gather together with sketches, wood scraps, gadgets and such that they relax for awhile, laze around on the warm pavement and imagine wild and ambitious things for themselves. I hope from their science symposium afternoons, thoughts spring forth of apartments with even more books, standing in front of bigger classrooms talking about even more important things, building even better cars and solving the most troublesome of problems. I hope they imagine being part of significant things and I hope they imagine going to the moon. After all, they have built hovercrafts, so certainly they can do anything.
Well done, you dreamers of dreams!
