Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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34 Chemical Reaction
1
I must have lived a sheltered life,
Because it sparked a little fear,
My friend showed me something new,
That had been around for a hundred years.
2
We were letting Ron’s dogs run raccoons around,
In the middle of the night,
The dogs had no problem seeing,
But us humans needed light.
3
Now me, I carried a flashlight,
But Ron, he had a brass can,
He put water in the top of it,
In the bottom Ron put black sand.
4
What Ron had was a Carbide lamp,
That turned water into acetylene gas,
After it mixed with the Calcium Carbide,
The reaction was very fast.
5
I tried not to look astonished,
But my imagination soared,
As miners had been using them,
Since before the civil war.
6
But that set me to wondering,
That at this time in the show,
At twenty-five years old and counting,
What else did I not know?
7
Turns out this chemical reaction was humbling,
Was I still a green and naïve man?
What else did I not know?
What else didn’t I understand?