You youngsters don't know how lucky you are - my first aircraft was the Boeing 707-400, which had such poor performance that we made the first configuration change on leaving the second segment and retracted the flaps at 400ft. The airline also operated the 707-300 which was quite similar except that it had leading edge flaps; if an inadvertent config. change was made on this aircraft at 400ft it would have gone down, so the fleets were segregated. I believe that this policy was implemented after some incidents and the loss of an SAA 707-300. I think the point is that we are creatures of habit; usually nothing needs to be done in a hurry so take time and think about it before manipulating something, like I now have to do when driving my wife's automatic, but I still manage to stamp on the brake thinking it's the clutch!