Handle with care …

… Southerners, Snakes, and Me  | The Georgia Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

“I believe that a large amount of unorganized time is valuable in life,” the great horticulturist David Fairchild writes, describing his boyhood. “My childhood was more casual than that of most children today, who are forced into some sort of regimented play,” he recounts. “I can see no advantage (particularly to a young naturalist) in this over-organization of childhood.” I was fortunate to be born with no athletic ability or any precocious gifts. My parents encouraged “boyhood’s painless play.” They allowed me to roam and grow weedy, trying this and that, and pulling books off library shelves at random.

I had much the same good luck.