Stupid things you did as a kid

[mod34]

A few:

-During the long bus rides to our High School, it was fairly common for a group of us to sit in the back of the bus (there were only about 12 of us on the bus total going from town out the nearest parochial school) and drink skrew drivers and eat donuts.

-In 5th grade, my good friend and I began to hoard the grapes our moms packed in the plastic baggies in our lunches and made a decent batch of wine.

-In high school, a friend of mine and me would break the metal pocket clips off of pens and have pen sword fights with them...........until one opened my palm up real good and got stuck in it. WOW, did that thing bleed!!

 

[Frank46]

Ah the immortality of youth gotta remember that one. I went to a vocational high school. The usual classes auto, electrical and a few others. Well one day two idiots stole a car and were coming down a hill paved with belgian paving blocks which give exactly zip traction when wet. Hit a tree and both went through the windsheild, neither lived. In the electrical class there was always some moron who figured he was tougher than 110vac. 110vac always won. Frank

 

[PWGUNNY]

My 2 brothers and I were raised by my mom, a single parent. There were lots of opportunities for stupidity, but this one cracks me up. My mom always called me her little Davey Crockett, because of my passion for the frontier life. One day, when I was 6, Mom went out for the afternoon, leaving my brothers and I alone. Boredom set in, so I went in the backyard with my trusty hatchet and chopped down all my Mom's Rhododendrons. Stepping back to admire my handiwork, I realized the toppled bushes were a dead giveaway that something wasn't right in the backyard. I was able to beg one of my older brothers into helping me dispose of the dead bodies by heaving them over our fence into the elderly neighbors backyard. Later my Mom returned home and screamed when she saw the devastation in the backyard. She instantly singled me out of the lineup and asked what happened. My answer, "It was a tornado". I lost my trusty hatchet for good and TV for a week.

 

[shouldazagged]

She instantly singled me out of the lineup and asked what happened. My answer, "It was a tornado". I lost my trusty hatchet for good and TV for a week.

Good thinking! I would have said it was termites, but that would have been less convincing.

 

[Silver Dollar]

Did your dad frequently catch hell for not putting the seat up?

I don't know but before my mother passed in Aug at 97, she swore she never knew about the incident.

 

[Bkreutz]

I shudder when I think about some of the things I did (or tried)

 

[portejw]

Glue the cone down on those model rockets, stick them in a pvc pipe and now you have a bazooka if you have a buddy who will light the fuse for you. When doing it in the woods... watch out they will bounce off trees and come STRAIGHT back!

Smokey the bear worked overtime in my home town

We never used the actual rocket, just the fuel pellets. They were about the size of a 12-guage shell, solid fuel inside (sort of a school chalk consistency) and wrapped in cardboard. The pellet burned far quicker than the wrapping and the lighter it got, the wilder the trajectory was. It was high-tech for the time, wasn't lit with a match, but instead had two fuse stems coming from them. The stems connected directly to the launch device (box with a key, two toggles and two buttons, and about 20' of wire lead). Key had to be inserted and turned, toggles had to be flipped one at a time, then both buttons pressed together to trigger the launch.

Anyway, we discovered within minutes that if the wire leads weren't connected to the pellet stem, but were held very close to each other, a small spark formed when triggered. Incidentally, we adapted that launcher as a firing system for the turnips The Hunt for Red October was just old enough to be on basic cable as a prime time movie, and we had seen it about a week before. After that, my friend always insisted on wearing the key around his neck whenever we were using it.

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

we has an old security gurd that patrolled the neighborhood. He hates us and we hated him (Think Otis on Andy Griffin with a gun and an attitude problem).
We would string wire across the street and tie it to a couple of trashcans on trash night (this was back when trash cans were galvanized steel). We would then get about hald a block "downwind" ansd start to ligt firecrackers. Well, he came a screaming down in his poopoo brown ford galaxy hit that wire and those two trash cans would come screaming into his doors Believe it or not-it took three or four times and one of the parents telling us to quit it before we stopped

Another time the following summer-we pried off his half moon hubcaps and filled them with shrimp shells and put them back on. It took about a week in the hot New Orleans sun for them to get REALLY ripe to the point where you couldn't get close to the car without gagging
And I was NOT the one who flushed the lit m80 down the toilet at school and blew out the sewerage pipe-but I know who did Takl about a lesson in hydraulics
And I didn't do a lot more things either that I'm not going to tell you about on the internet.

 

[PALADIN85020]

This thread is beginning to look like an Anarchist's Cookbook for wayward children....

John

 

[rburg]

The family down the street had a really cool father. He was a bartender down in the old west end here. Every 4th of July he's supplement his income by selling fireworks. I remember a few times he got caught and once he had to spend a few days in the jail. He laughed about it, saying he made more money in the 2 weeks before than in any other 3 month period. He was also the favorite of all the kids. One year he called us all together for a "meeting". No one questioned old Ralph, we just appeared as ordered.

And it was worth it because his big news was he was giving us a gross, like a full 144 cherry bombs. He had orders though. None were to be fired in town, except the guy he didn't likes back yard was fair game. We destroyed his garbage can. He was at work and we blew the top off the can until we lost it as it played frisbee down toward the woods. Then we turned it upside down. That resulted in it opening the entire seam. it was just twisted junk. And we still had a week or so to go!

One of the more fun and interesting games was baseball. Yep. It was close to the 4th and everyone in town kind of guessed we were the ones doing evil. So in all innocence we were stopped by the local and most hated patrolman ever. No one had anything in their pockets, just a cooler with some softdrinks, our baseball gloves and a few assorted balls. He looked and sent us on our way. Our destination was the abandoned parking lot maybe a mile out. We'd discovered that a tennis ball on top of a cherry bomb would launch almost out of sight. So we had fly ball practice. Oh, the cherry bombs were in the fingers of our ball gloves. One guy had a lighter.

And then we used what we had left to fish with. They had waterproof fuses. We learned quickly if you tossed one in a lake, you'd get a shower. So we made mud balls that would sink. Lots of floating fish, buy nearly all were the over populated catfish. Big heads, shriveled bodies.

Yes, a cigarette fuse would give you about 12 to 15 minutes of time. Best to drop one in a garbage can and walk away like its all cool. Then about the 10 minute mark it was time to stop and look back, or talk to someone. When it finally went off, no one guesses who the culprit was.

By the time we were about 20 we learned there had been a discussion over our games. It was decided by the fathers (with no female input) that as long as we played with factory fireworks, we probably wouldn't experiment with more dangerous home made stuff. That was how every year we somehow managed to score some but not too many things that went bang. Our fathers were better to us than we knew.

 

[Road Rat]

BB gun fights and the only rule was you couldn't aim at their eyes.

Throw a handful of .22LRs in a fire, run, duck and watch them explode and send pieces flying everywhere.

Anyone remember what we called Mumbledipeg, a game with a knife and your hand?

I didn't know you lived my childhood!!!

Good thing the only part of the .22's that came out of the fire was the brass; and it didn't go far!!

Mumbledipeg as a game we would play for hours.......but only sharpening the blade til you could shave your arm hair with it!
HEY, we were smart back then!!!!

A good thing - we used to get into Dads carbide supply! Now there is some fun stuff.

 

[PALADIN85020]

Pretty sage observation...

John

 

[shouldazagged]

The kids-and-fireworks theme reminded me of something I hadn't thought of for a long time. Many years ago--around fifty--my first wife and I were visiting my brother's home, and we were all sitting out in his back yard. Some neighborhood teenagers were setting off firecrackers, pretty powerful ones, in the alley behind his next-door-neighbor's house. It was getting annoying, so my brother and I had an idea. He went indoors and got his Ithaca 37 twelve-gauge and loaded one round. Then he sat out of sight of the kids, while I watched them. One of the little twerps set a big firecracker on top of the neighbor's garbage can. There was a bit of a breeze, so he leaned really close to the cracker to light it. Just then I cued my brother, and he lit off the twelve-gauge round up into the air.

The kid with the lighter nearly wet himself, and the crew scattered like a covey of quail on speed.

Illegal, of course, but a nice moment.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

In my Junior Year of High School we had a very crazy schedule-study hall for 20 minutes, then down to lunch, then back to study hall. We sat in the balcony of the auditorium, which I maintain was designed for midgets-I used to joke I could scratch my nose with my knee. So there we are one day, a bunch of bored and restless 16 year olds. My buddy at the time starts shooting at the chandeliers with a rubber band and paper clips. Then Yours Truly escalates the Arms Race-this is in 1966 remember. I broke off a piece of an old heavy gage wire coat hanger and gave that to him to shoot. He let fly-and hit a light bulb.