I get the impression that most people's chemistry experience was much different than mine.
Ours was about rote memorization, period. I kind of feel like I missed out.
I feel your pain though. I didn’t get to see any of this cool stuff until I was in college.
This was my experience (growing up outside of the US). I'm not sure I'd call our schools lab a "lab". Oversized closet for 30 year old bunsen burners would be a better descriptor.
I never used them. Not once. I never saw them used. They were a feature of hopeful design, or vestigial hands-on activities.
Same teacher told stories about how he nearly killed a student with explosives he made in his home country of britain where he is no longer a practicing teacher.
I did try making the tear gas recipe from Anarchists Cookbook in the crawlspace under a friend's house. Gas of some sort escaped from a stoppered flask midway through the process - I don't know if it was anything close to actual teargas, but the stench was memorable! We rolled out from under the house gagging and laughing, very happy his mom wasn't home.
We utterly failed in our subsequent attempt to make thermite. In retrospect, maybe that C minus was generous.
It was not until the 00's that the schools went crazy
Many people, even those that were "top students" in other STEM classes, complained about how hard his tests were. As someone terrible at memorizing, I not only enjoyed the challenge but aced that course, despite not really being that interested in chemistry.
The remainder of high school and a lot of university was just memorization. If you knew the formula you could do great, but I had such a hard time remembering that type of detail. I did ok, but on many occasions I remember wishing more courses were like that Chem class, and it still stands out over 20 years later.