He Wants To Use His Hands Because His Mother Doesn’t Use Her Mind

I started my career as a manual machinist, and making things has always been my passion. Since then, I’ve done well for myself financially and have built myself an admittedly pretty extensive home workshop. I have a refurbished Bridgeport knee mill, a large metal lathe, surface grinders, and several other tools that would be typical in a well-equipped machine shop.

I have a nine-year-old son who thinks all of Dad’s big fancy tools are fascinating. Obviously, he’s not allowed in the workshop unsupervised and knows not to try to run any of the machines. Everything is kept locked if I am not there, but he knows how all the machines work and is very proud of that.

One night, [Son] has a friend stay over, and he wants to show his friend the tools. Everything is turned off and I am with them, so I let [Son] show [Friend] around. He walks [Friend] through what all the machines do and how you would use them (as well as a nice lecture about shop safety).

Once he’s done, we go have pizza, the boys spend the evening playing video games, and I don’t give it a second thought until the next morning when [Friend]’s mother comes to pick him up.

She storms up to me.

Mother: “What the h*** is wrong with you?! You have no right to endanger my son like that! He had no business around those tools!”

Now, I know that small children are prone to exaggeration, so I figure [Friend] oversold what all was involved.

Me: “All I did was show your son around my shop. None of the machines even had power. He didn’t touch anything; it was just a show and tell.”

Mother: “I don’t care! You put ideas in his head! My little [Friend] risked life and limb, and now he wants to use those blasted things! He is too smart to use his hands!“

Me: “Well, I guess we have different levels of respect for people that work with their hands.”

I left it at that as I didn’t think either of us would change the other’s mind.