For me, it was when I was four years old.
My father was in the Navy, and we were stationed in Okinawa.
There used to be these huge by large drainage culverts all over the place by the base, and us kids would follow them down into the underground pipes. Well, we'd follow them as far as we could by the available light. Sometimes we used matches, sometimes we used candles.
When my father and his friends caught us kids going down there, I thought he was going to have a fit, but none of the fathers gave us any real flak about it beyond telling us we couldn't go down there without them being near.
When I was about six, he and his buds loaded us up with cheap chrome 2D flashlights and we all went from one end of the culverts to another, probabably about two miles underground.
The rats and roaches were something to behold, but my father would chase them away by throwing firecrackers at them. They were the strange kind of firecrackers that you struck on a box just like a match, and they were powerful as all heck. You could get anything in Okinawa in the way of fireworks back then (the 60's) up to and including the 'real' silver salutes, M-80's, M-500's and M-1000's.
The pipes eventally led us out to a beautiful lake. Remember it well because not only did the fathers trust us enough to go down into the pipes, but they actually came with us as well.
IIRC, the cheap chrome flashlights had a plastic head, but I can't remember for sure. I know that I probably played with them before that, but this memory is solid. My girls already play with flashlights for everything, and I'll bet they'll have a lot more stories than me to tell when they get older.
My father was in the Navy, and we were stationed in Okinawa.
There used to be these huge by large drainage culverts all over the place by the base, and us kids would follow them down into the underground pipes. Well, we'd follow them as far as we could by the available light. Sometimes we used matches, sometimes we used candles.
When my father and his friends caught us kids going down there, I thought he was going to have a fit, but none of the fathers gave us any real flak about it beyond telling us we couldn't go down there without them being near.
When I was about six, he and his buds loaded us up with cheap chrome 2D flashlights and we all went from one end of the culverts to another, probabably about two miles underground.
The rats and roaches were something to behold, but my father would chase them away by throwing firecrackers at them. They were the strange kind of firecrackers that you struck on a box just like a match, and they were powerful as all heck. You could get anything in Okinawa in the way of fireworks back then (the 60's) up to and including the 'real' silver salutes, M-80's, M-500's and M-1000's.
The pipes eventally led us out to a beautiful lake. Remember it well because not only did the fathers trust us enough to go down into the pipes, but they actually came with us as well.
IIRC, the cheap chrome flashlights had a plastic head, but I can't remember for sure. I know that I probably played with them before that, but this memory is solid. My girls already play with flashlights for everything, and I'll bet they'll have a lot more stories than me to tell when they get older.