I was seven.

My dad didn’t give me a paintbrush so I made one by taping a chunk of styrofoam to a stick so I could paint my wooden airplane. It was oil based paint.

When my war vet father saw the styrofoam dissolving, he grabbed the can away from me, remembered the cigarette in his mouth, then shoved it back and made me put the lid on first.

And that was when I learned how to make nitro glycerine.