True story
When we were kids we'd go with my mom to pick up my dad, sometimes he wouldn't come right out so on occasion we'd go into his office and wait. on his desk he had a veil of Mercury about 2 onces and he'd let up pour it out and play with it

When I was a kid, my dad had a vial of mercury, which he had the good sense not to let US touch, but he'd pour it from one of his hands to the other and swirl it around, and we were all fascinated by this liquid metal.
In the same vein, my grandparents got me a mineral "kit" for my birthday one year that had all sorts of little chunks of different minerals glued to a card. One of them was pitchblende. I looked that up recently and found out it's a radioactive form of uranium! And it was in a kids' science kit! There was also a piece of asbestos, and something else dangerous which I have since forgotten the name of.
It truly amazes me sometimes how we managed to get through to adulthood relatively unscathed.
