+ There's a reason that scene hits so hard. As an infant, I wore old-school foot braces — a + pair of rigid shoes bolted to a metal bar that kept my legs aligned. I still get phantom + sensations of not being able to move my legs independently, decades later. Dreams where + I'm trying to run but something invisible holds my feet together. +
++ Forrest Mims' notebooks were my version of Jenny yelling "Run!" His hand-drawn circuits + didn't care about your background or your limitations. They just said: here's how a + transistor works, here's how to build something real. That directness — no gatekeeping, + no prerequisites, just knowledge laid bare on the page — made electronics feel like + something I could actually do. Not just read about. Do. +
++ Learning from Mims felt like the moment the braces broke off. Suddenly the thing that + seemed impossibly complicated was just... circuits. Components. Connections you could + trace with your finger. And once you built your first blinking LED or heard your first + 555 timer squeal, there was no going back. You were running. +
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