This was before I started doing drugs.

In 7th grade we had metal shop.

Basically imagine any piece of cutting or bending or smoothing tool you would need in a professional metal shop and we probably had it. It was amazing. We had a wood shop too. 5 years later they closed anything that could cut a finger off and replaced it with something less physically harmful. Oh well.

Back to metal shop. One of my favorite things to do in metal shop was simply melt lead using a ladle with the blowtorch and then pour the lead into casts and let it cool and pop those fishing weights or soldier figurines out. The smell of lead metal fumes is embedded in my memory.

I wonder how many IQ points I wiped out in the process.