I was also very interested in chemistry, I had chemistry sets. In those days you could buy chemicals and I was trying to make a rocket engine. That was my big project. And I would basically make gun powder to make a rocket engine which is kind of amazing I didn't kill myself. It's very dangerous. I would pack this gun powder with aluminium, aluminium seemed to help it. So I had aluminium powder and would pack it in and try to make rockets.

And I remember once, fortunately I had very good remote ignition technology, electrical. It had batteries and nichrome wire to remote detonate it. But at one time I had this batch of rocket fuel that didn't seem to be working. And so I kind of gave up on it. But I had this model boat, model pirate boat. So I decided to pack all my dud rocket fuel into the boat and float it in the bird bath and blow up the boat. So I got back a distance and I detonated it and got a way bigger explosion than I'd ever gotten before. And pieces of the bird bath flew past me and I totally destroyed the bird bath.

So that... I was just lucky nothing... Yes. I didn't get hurt, but I scared myself. And I got more careful after that. But my parents never noticed that I took the pieces of the bird bath and I kind of hid them and threw them away. And my parents didn't notice the bird bath was missing for like months and months, and then at the dinner table somebody said, 'Didn't we used to have a bird bath?' And I just kept my mouth shut. But years later I met someone who lived down the hill from me and I said where I lived and they said, 'Oh, did you live up next to that kid that was always making those explosions?' I was like, 'No, I was that kid.'