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Showing posts from December, 2017

Curiosity

“Touch it and check its temperature”, said grandfather to mom who at the time was holding a three year old me in her arms. Unaware that he was addressing mother, I instinctively reached out and planted my palm flat on a steam iron. My anguished cries of “HE TOLD ME TO DO IT” brought the ceiling down and earned a visit from the neighbours. A week later, seeing dad work with a soldering iron melting metal as though it were sorcery caught my attention and he had me begging to learn. “Hold it in your hands”, he said, and I did exactly that. I put in the deathly grip of my half-inch fingers the searing hot iron, ignoring the dainty yellow plastic handle, which called for another round of worried phone calls.                 I have been fortunate enough to have a family that fostered my curiosity. By the age of seven, I had stuffed jewellery in a desktop to see “where the pretty lights came from” and used a laptop to iron a soaking wet napkin. I was never reprimanded, instead they asked