I think I was eleven or twelve years old when one of my younger brothers and I decided that we could fix our broken lawnmower. My recollection is that it was the first gas-powered lawnmower we owned, and it was given to us by someone who had purchased a new one.
I remember the taxing work of using the push-style lawnmower, the kind powered the force of the person pushing it.
Being pre-teen boys, however, our intention wasn’t to fix the lawnmower to spare ourselves the difficult work of returning to the push-style. We’d grown up with that, so going back to doing it that way didn’t require any imagination.
Our plan was ambitious: turn an old lawnmower into a motorized go-cart. For weeks, we worked on building a heavy, sturdy wooden frame that we’d already tested by jumping on it. We repurposed the lawnmower’s wheels, attaching them to the frame, and engineered a steering mechanism that, in theory, was quite clever.
Steering relied on a plastic-covered cable tied to either side of the cart. Pulling the cable one way or the other would cause the front wheels to turn — though not nearly enough to navigate a 90-degree street corner. When faced with tight turns, we had to get off and manually shift the body another 45 degrees to keep going.
The big hill near our home was great for downhill tests. Our craft succeeded amazingly on the way down. Once on flat ground, and with no engine, we took turns pushing each other around on the heavy cart.
Fun? Absolutely.
Practical? Not even close.
That’s what had us so excited about the motor. We worked all morning one Saturday figuring out how to take apart the two-cycle engine. We exposed the piston and saw that it was seized, probably due to a lack of oil in the fuel mixture but we were guessing at all of it.
The end of that story is we got the piston moving again but after reassembling the engine it would never spark to life. Still, our friend-powered go-cart continued to serve our purposes on multiple occasions that summer.
Funny enough, both of us grew up to study engineering in school. I bet you didn’t see that one coming.
The Power of Curiosity
Neither of us was trained in small engine repair. We had no idea what we were doing, but wasn’t the point. We wanted to see what we could make with what we had. I once convinced myself I could reprogram our first cordless phone to be a universal garage door opener. That didn’t work either, but it was a lot of fun trying.
Somewhere along the way, many (most?) of us lose the spark of curiosity. Maybe it gets buried under the weight of routines — waking up, going to work, and cramming family responsibilities (or binge-watching TV) into the few hours left before bed. It feels safer to stick with what we know than to risk the unknown.
But curiosity isn’t hard to reignite. Years ago, I rediscovered mine. I’d always loved writing as a kid, but for a long time, I let it gather dust on the shelf. Then, on a whim, I started putting my thoughts on Medium. I don’t make enough from it to fund a monthly Del Taco run, but I love doing it. Sharing my ideas — even with a small audience — brings a similar joy to what I felt tinkering with projects as a kid.
Of course, curiosity doesn’t always guarantee success. Sometimes it means failing spectacularly — and that’s where the best lessons are hidden.
Lessons in Failure
Unless you give up, failure is often not the end of the story but where progress happens. Nils Bohlin, the Swedish engineer who invented the modern three-point seatbelt, understood this well.
In the late 1950s, Volvo tasked Bohlin with creating a safer, more user-friendly seatbelt. Early designs failed to distribute crash forces properly or were too hard for many passengers to use. But Bohlin persisted, refining his approach through countless iterations.
He eventually developed the three-point design: a strap across the chest and lap that was simple, effective, and life-saving. Volvo introduced it in 1959 and shared the design freely, saving millions of lives worldwide.
Bohlin’s efforts remind us that failure refines success. Persistence, even through setbacks, often leads to solutions that outlast us.
Bohlin’s story, like so many stories of triumph, is about persistence and highlights that experimentation is often required— the willingness to test, fail, adjust, and try again. It’s a mindset a bit like the playful curiosity we had as kids when tackling projects. Play isn’t just about fun; it’s a powerful way to discover new ideas, stretch our creativity, and learn without the pressure of perfection.
The Role of Play in Discovery
I love technology, but I’m often grateful I grew up before it was everywhere. I still remember the thrill of getting our first computer — and knowing it wasn’t a toy. My dad, a school teacher, taught himself coding to create educational games that became a hit in his district. Watching him crack open a manual and figure it out taught me that technology was about inspiring and supporting creativity. It had nothing to do with consumption. TV was still all we had for that — all 5 broadcast channels of it.
Also, technology wasn’t automatic. It was a challenge. I built my first computer from parts I bought at electronics stores, with no YouTube tutorials to guide me. It wasn’t about instant answers; it was about exploring and learning as I went.
Now, convenience has taken over. We swipe, tap, and let devices do the thinking. Don’t get me wrong. I love the convenience that comes from being able to look up an obscure debugger message and get help from thousands of good programmers, but sometimes the convenience leaves little room for wonder. To an extent, we’ve lost the joy that comes from struggling, failing, and figuring something out.
Admittedly, with so much going on in my life, I often take the path of least resistance, but do sometimes like embracing the messiness of trying something hard without relying on technology. That’s what makes my childhood projects such good memories — the process was imperfect, but it was meaningful. I wasn’t a consumer. I was a creator.
How Wonder Shapes Who We Become
It’s funny how a summer of cobbling together a friend-powered go-cart ended up being less about the ride and more about what it set in motion. At that stage of my life, I was still convinced I would grow up to be a zoologist or veterinarian.
At the time, I didn’t connect the dots between tinkering with a lawnmower and studying mechanical engineering years later. But looking back, it’s clear that those moments of trial and error — the hours spent testing ideas that rarely worked — laid a foundation for how I approach challenges even today.
Wonder Will Always Get Us There
We never got that engine running, and I never turned that cordless phone into a universal garage door opener. I didn’t grow up to be a mechanical engineer designing groundbreaking inventions, either. Instead, I’ve spent more than 25 years working in distribution-focused industries — far from the go-carts and gadgets of my childhood. But the spark I found as a kid, in the trying and failing, never left me.
That spark shaped how I approach problems today. When I see an issue worth solving, I rarely back down. There’s something about the process of figuring things out — whether it works or not — that still fuels me. It’s funny to think that the same curiosity and persistence that drove me to build a friend-powered go-cart now fuels the work I do as an adult. That little spark ignited a flame, and even after all these years, it continues to burn in ways that sometimes surprise me.
Where will wonder take you?
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