@ skiwillgee: When I was 5 I was using the abacus, which is actually quite fun. I still have my sliderule too, with a leather pouch that clips to the belt. Looks like a Rambo type knife from far. When the Texas Instruments calculator came out, I moved to those.

I know what you mean by doing the telephone pole thing. My father used to do surveillance work which involved that for the OSS (before the CIA). His thumb muscle got huge for working with all that.