Back when I was a kid, we lived out of town, lighting was kerosene lamps, radios were all valve battery sets, & the most "electrical" thing kids played with were battery "Torches" (flashlights).
After messing around with everything else I could wreck, I fixed upon the hapless torches, discovering that, yes, they didn't need the reflector to work.
This was also tied in with my obsession with making a movie projector, after finding an article on a magazine about making a film strip projector.
I didn't know the difference, so as 9 year old, had delusions about what I could make.
When we moved back to the city, at about 11, such things lost their appeal, cars were much more appealing, & I became a little revhead, as they were fun to work on.
Thus, it was not till I was around 14 that I built my first bit of electronics--a "one valve" regenerative radio which didn't work.
(Thinking back, I probably had the feedback winding connections reversed)
The next year, I made a better regen radio which did work, although not as well as I would have liked.
A couple of years later, I made a proper superhet radio---a "mantel set" for my Mum, which worked Ok for some years.
I went off building stuff for years after that.
I keep planning to revisit those "regen sets" to see if they were just crap designs, or if it was my poor construction techniques.