The Navy has, or used to have, a program called Sea Perch. It teaches Middle Schoolers quite a bit about using tools. Students make a ‘vehicle’ that can be maneuvered underwater using PVC cutters, drills, and soldering irons, among other things. I never quite liked the word ‘vehicle’ in connection with the device because it was really a frame of PVC pipe with three motors attached, pointing in different directions, plus a long attached cable and box with joystick. Vehicle in my mind means ‘enclosed space.’

The students were also given components to solder onto a motherboard which was then stuck inside a box to make a control box. The different motors were managed with a combination of buttons and toggles on the controller. Anyway, probably the most exciting moment I ever had as a teacher was when one group of students finished their assembly, connected their cable to a 12 volt battery, and immediately started a fire.

When I was very young we had a toaster whose cord had frayed. One morning when the toast was pressed down, the cord popped, and a flame flickered into being on the — carpeted — floor. I hit the eject button on the toaster, the bread popped up, and the flame went out. My mother was utterly shocked and asked me how I known what to do. But, of course, I didn’t know. I just acted. However, my personal instinct with electrical fires continues to be — interrupt the current as quickly as possible. And my lizard brain says to do this by reversing the last action taken. I have no idea what an actual fireman would say to do, though I am sure it wouldn’t be what I actually did with the toaster.

So it was in that classroom. I immediately reached out and slapped the cord off the battery, smacking one of the students in the face as I did so. I was doubly lucky. It could have been terrible but instead, the fire went out. The student thought I had done the right thing, and made no complaint. As a matter of fact, he thought the whole incident was very funny. In the aftermath we determined that this group, when they put the mother board into the control box, had failed to trim the last two bits of cord that were soldered onto the motherboard. The two ends had been pressed toward each other inside the box, until they touched, and when given some juice they shorted right out.

I’ve written before about how important it is to carefully read instructions. After the classroom fire one student insisted that the directions had been at fault because, she said, they had followed all of them. No. They hadn’t. I found the instruction that said, “Trim those bits…” and showed it to her. She was not pleased with me.

Unfortunately, I have to admit I’m as bad as anyone else when it comes to reading directions carefully. I had a problem when making a stole last spring. The directions had to be followed even when they seemed nutty. Once they were followed though, and the result could be seen, it was clear what was being done. That made it much more straightforward to remember how to make a stole. I did three in a row, partly as practice.

So now, when I’m trying to make a burse*, I found a Youtube video and watched it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-_mEIu5Pek) Haha. You didn’t think I actually watched it from beginning to end? As soon as I thought I understood the clever thing that the video maker was showing me, I went off to make the burse with a predictable result. I missed a crucial step (because I quit watching the video), and fixing the resulting mistake is annoying and difficult. Instead of working with two flat pieces of material I’ve arranged things so that I have to reach inside a folded piece of cloth to line up a different piece that belongs there, and pin it down before I sew it.

It never ends well when I decide I don’t need to listen or read carefully.

*A burse is that square object on top of a chalice on the altar that can be opened slightly and have objects (like used altar linen) placed inside them.