Curiosity

{Saturday stories are a weekly break from our regular Scripture based devotional. I hope you enjoy them}

Our old family home on 104th East Avenue—back when it was still country—is now tucked in the middle of a growing city. These days, it's surrounded by pavement and parking lots, but when I was a kid, it was wheat fields, cattle pastures, and sky. We had neighbors, sure, but none within a stone’s throw.

Directly across the road was a wide open stretch of land. I don’t know who owned it. Whoever it was didn’t seem to mind that we treated it like our personal 1,000-acre playground. Or maybe they did—we never asked.

We rode bikes through it. Took our dogs, Blue and Spot, out rabbit hunting—though in truth, they took us. We wandered through winding ravines, discovered wild things, and even made friends with a duck we named Popcorn because he liked to eat popcorn we brought him from home. It was a child's kingdom, endless and wild.

The only real trouble I remember getting into over there happened when curiosity got the better of us. There was an old loafing shed near the roadside fence, not far from a worn-down cattle pen. One day, we wandered that way.

The shed was empty. No cattle, no gear, not much of anything—except for one thing: a bucket. Inside was something white and chalky-looking. Solid, not liquid. It didn’t belong there, at least not in our minds, and that made it interesting.

I don’t remember who had the bright idea—or why we thought it was the least bit reasonable—but we decided to do some field science. We went down to one of the little creek beds, filled a separate bucket with water, lugged it back, and poured it over the mystery substance.

That’s when things got strange.

It sizzled. Not like bacon in a pan—more like something alive reacting. Steam—or maybe smoke—rose in curling wisps, carrying a sharp, sulfuric stink. We backed away, eyes wide, wondering what chemical chain reaction we’d just triggered. Would it explode? Catch fire? Burn the whole shed down? Were we inhaling something toxic? Were we going to die?

In our infinite childhood wisdom, we made the only sensible decision available: we ran. Fast. Back home. And we never said a word about it to any adult. Ever.

To this day, I still wonder what that stuff was. I never went back to check. Whatever it was, it didn’t destroy the world. We lived. The shed didn’t burn down. Nobody came knocking. But the memory lingers—white smoke rising from a bucket and two boys bolting across the pasture, hearts pounding with equal parts fear and wonder.

That was curiosity. Pure, reckless, and unforgettable.

Photo by thomas shellberg on Unsplash