Childhood Retrospective

Retrospective on How our Interests Draws us into What we Love to Do

Looking back now, I see my extreme interest in innovation. But, at that time it was only a means to an end.

When I was 12 years old I found a 8 mm roll of film and after holding it up to the light, I realized it was a film of a soccer game. The thought of finding or buying a projector was out of the question. So, I decided to do whatever it took to be able to watch the game with my friends. Make a long story short, after several trial and errors, what I concocted was medium size box that housed a battery operated armature, which is a battery operated miniature motor type that I took out of a motorized toy car. found 2 small wheel from a big wheel that had small enough rear wheels to work the film, 2 iron rods, my mom's magnifying mirror on one side and the opposite type mirror on the other. A magnifying glass, glue, tape, thin white sheet of paper. So many things went wrong at first, and at the end it wasn't exactly perfect. But, we did watch the soccer game on probably the first crude version of a projector TV. It took me a month to get it working!! ;O) I wish I had a photo of it, but I don't. Just the memory of the obsession to finish what I had started. That was just the start. I made rewiring the phone lines where I could put people on hold listening to radio music. I got electrocuted a couple times, but it didn't seem to phase my enthusiasm.

Around the same age, the neighborhood kids we needed new soccer goals with nets. I found a welder and figured out how much it would cost. That caused my first fund raising event. I bought a big box of gums, and took the outside wrapping off and put my own made each with a unique number. I deputized a couple of more kids to begin selling to pieces of gums at premium price, and set the date for the drawing the winning number. The way I had calculated it, I would have enough to pay the welder, and the rest would go to buy the prize for the winner of the drawing or raffle. But, I didn't really know the concept of raffle at that time. So, we got out goals and new nets, and one of the kids won a new shiny toy car which was popular at that time. I remember I had disqualified myself and my family from participating or having a chance to win, although they could buy the gum. :o)

We become good at what we love and do a version of that as adults, or we should. It was fun reminiscing.