I, too, took a long train ride during WW2 when I was little, with my mother. We were the only civilians in a car full of soldiers. My mother dropped a hard-boiled egg, and it rolled down the aisle.

When I was in kindergarten, in Beverly Hills, CA, I read, or had read to me, a bible story in which God "breathed life" into His creatures after shaping them out of earth (Genesis 2:7). I did not realize that that was God's special talent; I thought it meant that if I made something and breathed on it, it would come alive. In all modesty, I did not suppose I could make an actual animal; I decided to make a live brick. I imagined it as made of flesh with skin all around it. I did not have access to any earthen material for the experiment, but I saw some wet sand in a sandbox at school, and thought that it might do. I did not seize the opportunity, tho, and I never saw the sand wet again.