I was a dumb curious kid...

When I was younger I had a fascination of things that would explode or start on fire. Well I suppose that I still find such things fun... But anyways... When I was in the 6th grade I thought it would be fun to make a home-made cherry bomb out of a hollowed out pen and some gun powder I could scrape out of the caps from a cap gun.

so I set about doing this in my dining room while my parents were outside. The thing about the pen is that it was an old Bic pen that was made of the really hard plastic that would shatter and not just bend. So I started to gather up the gun power and funneled it into the pen.

Now here I am, 11 years old playing with gun powder, not being totally aware of its properties. I had the pen about half way full when I made a huge mistake. I packed the powder in really hard with a thin piece of metal... BANG!! About 18 inches away from my face this thing explodes and sounds like a gun shot... The pen, being made of the hard plastic shattered into about 12 sharp pieces.

to my fortune, none of the pieces flew toward my face or body, cause they without a doubt would have pierced my flesh.

My ears didn't stop ringing for hours....