I was about 8. Summer holidays in rural America were extremely boring. I really loved lemon meringue pie, so one summer I started baking them from my Mom's Betty Crocker cookbook. (This was back when Betty was still mostly from scratch.) I would ask my mom for grocery money, walk a few miles to the grocery store with my brother, buy ingredients, walk back, and bake the pie. This, of course, took nearly all day. Perfect boredom antidote! I did this at least four days a week. I often colored the pie filling snot green to amuse my brother. Nobody knew what color it was going to be, of course, until the pie was cut. It only took me two more decades to perfect my pie crust technique.