“Don’t Cut Yourself,” or “Burn The House Down” 

     A rite of passage for any young boy is when he gets his first jackknife. Of course, with it always came the admonition, “Don’t cut yourself,” as though this was high on the kid’s bucket list. The admonition had no effect on whether or not he cut himself. For some reason the parent felt better for having issued the warning. 
     Sporting a bandaged finger or hand, or some other highly visible body part, if the kid was lucky, and then being able to say, casually of course, “Oh yeah, I cut myself with my knife,” was also part of the rite of passage. And if it left a scar, that was the trifecta of knife ownership. 
    But a young boy who asks for a magnifying glass, and then has parents that are surprised when he starts a fire with the thing, has just got parents who didn’t think his request through thoroughly. I mean, what else would a young boy do with a magnifying glass? Read some fine print? Not likely. 
    Well, one set of Texas parents, who seemed to be pleased when their son asked for a magnifying class for Christmas, were then surprised when the boy and his brother came rushing into the house to tell them that their lawn was on fire. These are folks who probably had been deprived of a magnifying glass when young. 
    When young, my cousin and I used my family’s magnifying glass to burn all sorts of stuff. Small stuff or course. We didn’t start any fires we couldn’t put our ourselves, but a magnifying glass can burn a hole through a beetle slick as a Star War’s light saber. It was a slow, but organic way to get rid of the things that ate the garden.
    That wasn’t as entertaining as feeding the dog the milk from a poppy, but it was right up there on the list of entertaining things to do around the farm. 
    And at that time we had to take what entertainment we could get, where ever we could get it.