Youthful exuberance and technological discoveries

Sometimes, we can gain great insight by acting on impulse - or intuitively, as some would prefer to say - whenever our curiosity overcomes our sense of caution.

Children are perfect examples. My two young children have taught me that children have energy that cannot be caged easily. About the age of two years, both never stood still and waited for you to act upon their usually urgent but simple requests.

They would simply act out whatever is in their minds. So did my 9-year old son after his recent birthday. He put on the water heater to take a bath because a cold shower was not to his liking just then.

Nothing remarkable about that, right? Well, it was really because that particular water heater downstairs had not been used for almost a year because of a suspected electrical wiring fault in the temperature scale readout.

Luckily for us all, he got his warm water bath with no untoward incident and we have all been enjoying that particular bathroom fully since then.

But it was something to really think deeply about. Supposing there really had been a problem with the wiring and my wife and I had not been vigilant enough to turn off the water heater on time?