In my late teen years I became reasonably accomplished at playing pool and snooker. One summer some of my parents friends were visiting and we got to talking about pool and Frank, who was just a little younger than my father said we ought to go to the hall and play a game. I was looking forward to getting the best of an adult. Didn’t happen. Frank ran the table. I was dumbfounded and he just said, “The joys of a misspent youth.” It was the first time I recall hearing the expression. He proceeded to tell me stories about mischief he got into during the depression years.
Today I was poking around the web looking for some design inspiration and came across Alec Steele’s blog. Lots of nice blacksmithing images. He took up the craft at age 11 and stayed with it and is now quite good. I’ve never met him but I enjoyed visiting his website. He has spent quite a bit of time with Brian Brazeal as his mentor. It looks to me like he’s finding a lot of joy in the work and not misspending his youth.
I was surprised to see this dictionary gave a pool playing reference as their second example.
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