When I was a kid I was the one who was always taking things apart to see how they worked. I’d take broken things apart to see if I could fix them and frequently succeeded. Enough so that I would go with my dad to the dump to collect radios to take home and repair and sell.
I didn’t always put tools back where I got them and sometimes took working things apart and couldn’t get them back together on the first attempt. I occasionally became part of a line current circuit. I found multiple ways to create explosions and made lots of toxic gases inadvertently and without proper ventilation.
In retrospect I was really lucky that there wasn’t more long term injury and damage and was really lucky that my parents didn’t put a halt to my curiosity. My dad did tell me that there were three things I shouldn’t disassemble without instructions on putting back together. Those were typewriters, firearms and camera shutters. I didn’t tell him I had already succeeded with two out of three. I proceeded to successfully figure out the typewriter that had previously frustrated me soon after that.
There wasn’t a good name yet for the kind of kid I was, I was just considered overly curious and “handy”. My dad was very good at fixing things and started me on automobile repairs at the age of 6. He didn’t understand anything electrical and was mystified that I could follow a wiring diagram for a washing machine and determine that the diode assembly in an alternator was the problem and much cheaper than replacing the entire alternator.
I was well on the way to becoming a maker without knowing anyone like me 45 years ago.
Since finding out about MakeICT I’ve been participating starting with helping build some little free libraries for some daycare center a little over 8 years ago in the West Douglas space. There were about as many kids as adults involved in that project and the entire thing was ad hoc and we had only donated and remnant materials and barely any power tools but we used an entirely collaborative process and just figured things out as we went along.
I knew I had found my people. I had to become a member even though I was completely broke and couldn’t afford a membership. But there was an informal scholarship offered and I could easily offer my time and experience instead of money. I volunteered for so many things that one of those early years I was recognized as volunteer of the year at our annual meeting.
After we had moved to East Douglas a frequent need was some parent of a child wanting someone to assist their kid in the ERP lab doing their thing that was completely beyond what the parent could help with. Many times things were taken apart and sometimes repaired or modified to do something novel. Somewhat more often a hackable item that had been donated was disassembled just to figure it out. Occasionally no such arrangement had been made and a kid left behind tools that weren’t put away and disassembled things were scattered and abandoned. It was not just accepted, these were our younger selves being allowed to become future makers.
I’d really hate to see occasional messes and breakage used by people who don’t remember that they were once that young, curious mind that needed some freedom to be wrong and to cause problems in order to learn what’s possible.
We can really do better as an organization in many ways. But with patience, kindness, tolerance and love we can also give back what we were given as kids and ensure that the next generations of makers aren’t being discouraged.