A $200 space age lesson

There are times when a mistake come with a price tag attached. Such times let me judge in a unique and precise way the value of the lesson to be learned.

I can think, for example, of a time when one of my children (all parties shall go un-named!) broke a window to get into the house and out of the rain because Mom was running an errand and the door was locked. There was a definite cost to replace the glass.

In another case a new driver failed to negotiate a curb and damaged a wheel, which had to be replaced at a not insignificant cost.

Another teen driver rear-ended a vehicle he was following a little too closely. While we did have insurance as protection for that very purpose, the deductible we had to satisfy was a definite dent in the checkbook.

Yet another student driver, momentarily distracted, veered off the road and damaged a trash receptacle and mailbox, both of which had to be replaced.

In these cases I usually tried to teach a lesson. Typically, I would tell the offender that the cost to repair the damage was well worth it if he/she learned never to make that mistake again!

I had my own lesson recently while vacationing in Utah. I had promised Autumn and Prairie that next time I visited I would help them fly model rockets. Because I knew I wouldn’t have adequate time to build rockets from kits during our visit, I took along some older models I built years earlier. With only a little fixing-up, these were ready to fly. However, in the frantic preparation and packing to go, I failed to carefully inspect and experiment with the launch system. I believed my previous experience with launching model rockets would stand me in good stead.

The first launch was successful, though not aimed as accurately as I would have liked. Thankfully, Ben did the chasing to recover this rocket. The second launch was with a larger rocket. I had misgivings about the launch rod, but decided to go ahead and hope for the best. This launch was a disaster. The rocket did not slide smoothly along the launch rod, but fell over. As I watched the engine burn on the ground, I realized the charge that deploys the parachute would pop the engine out of the rocket body and right at Brenda. I yelled for everyone to move back and out of the way. As Brenda started to do so, she caught her foot and fell flat on her backside. As she flung out her arms, the digital camera she was holding was thrown several feet across the parking lot. The price tag for this lesson was $200 to replace a camera that was damaged due to my negligence to follow proper safety procedures and test everything as I should have done.

Mom may think that I paid $200 to replace her camera. Actually, I paid the money to (re)learn the lesson that I always need to follow proper safety procedures and safeguard the well-being of others in everything I do. Short-cuts may save time, but often end up with a much higher cost. This experience seems to me to be a pretty cheap price to pay for such an important lesson.