The Stupidest Thing You Did in Your Childhood Thread

[SalukiFan]

Oh, I almost forgot:

When I was about five, I found a piece of plywood that my dad had left on the back porch.  At this age, my understanding of physics was developed from Road Runner cartoons so I decided that I would go and stand on the piece of plywood and pick myself up.  

I strained, trying to lift that piece of plywood while standing on top of it.  I heaved and heaved but somehow couldn't get that board to budge.  I remember thinking that I would have to try it again when I was stronger and then I would be able to do it.  I thought that I would just have to practice for a while and then I would be able to pick that board up and levitate!

[K Frame]

In college a friend and I took his father's restored Plymouth Road Runner convertible onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike outside of Carlisle, PA. There's a section with about 12 miles of straightaway. It had one of the 440 State Police interceptor engines and transmissions in it.

We buried the speedo at 160, and were still gaining speed, when we decided that discretion was the better part of staying alive.

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

Age 5: Chasing neighbor girl around the house. Thought it'd be funny to poke my head through the glass storm door. Wasn't.

Age 8: Playing out by the backyard trash burner. Had a catfood can full of gas in my hand and thought it'd be cool to stick a burning stick in it. Wasn't.

- NF

[Guest]

Like that grampster?

I read everything Ruark wrote. The first thing I did when a Field & Stream came into my possession - was to read Ruark's page. Then I read Tarpley's Tips.  

I had a real good time as a kid ...I sure do not remember Ruark depleting the hedges - one switch at a time tho'.

I always wondered if Tarpley ever got switched for using his Mom's lipstick to color fishing lures...I mean it works really well, just you have stand up to fish, butt too sore to sit down on the bank to fish...

After reading sm's post I have a lot of catching up to do.  Can I do it in 12 years?

NO!

Like I mentioned I am 50, and I do not plan on "being old".  Like the man said " Youth is wasted on the young".
Art puts it very well - " I didn't grow up - I just got bigger".

Anyone ever tie flies for flyfishing?  You want to "impress your wife and her friends"?  Use the Krups Coffee Bean Grinder to blend the squirrel's hair...forget to clean it ou, and just leave it on the counter. The wifey just stuck it in the cabinet without looking. That afternoon her co-workers come over and she makes coffee...or attempts to...Ewwy, Boy was wifey and her friends "impressed".

I " got to" [ like in right now] buy another Krups for the kitchen, as usual the hubby [me] gets the "old used stuff".

Her daddy thought it was a great idea...me using Black powder to rid the back yard of Fire Ants. Seems his wife was as impressed as mine was.  Next visit to In-laws wife and her mom first thought to send us out back...then second thought hit we might scheme or come up with something else. Somehow we ended up doing the cooking and the wife and mom got visit...they kept checking on us and everytime we opened a cabinet..."You don't need nothing from there", 'Put it back whatever it is you are getting out', then we spied the Raccoon that had been getting in the Garden. [out in the Country mind you]

FIL yells "Fire in the Hole"
I fired off a round from the back door with the 30-30 he kept behind back door.
Stepson is impressed...
Wife and MIL answered the phone that rang..." yeah that was Steve...about that Raccon,  it won't be bothering the garden anymore".

FIL tells stepson/grandson "your daddy never taught you stuff like that...pay attention and learn from Steve.

We didn't even burn the Fried Chicken , mess up the mashed 'taters , goof up the gravy, or forget about the Peach Cobbler. Even made a extra pitcher of tea...during all the fun.

Moans and groans from wifey and MIL " Lord help us all ...and you boys cannot go play with the dead Raccoon until supper is finished, and the dishes are washed and dried.

Women...they just don't understand "guy stuff".

---

Anyone else ever impress your mom by putting the fish you caught in the bathtub for her to see?

Way I figure it , since it was my job to clean to clean the tub anyway - what should she care?

 Maybe the part where I put little brother in tub with the fish is what got her all riled up. I thought it was a good idea, little brother thought it fun, playing with the fish and all...kept him occupied while I changed baby sister's diapers, and entertained her while cooking supper.

And just what is so wrong with taking the Corning Ware Coffee Perculator outside, running an extension cord, and putting bike parts in it to clean them? HOT Spic&Span does a real good job of getting bike parts clean.

Oh by age 10 I could take a bike all apart , I mean a-l-l apart and back together. All the kids brought their bikes over for me to fix. I mean I really did fix them correctly and all. Always fun to have a flat to fix and to lit the glue for the patches...

I 'fixed' the lawnmower all by myself by age 11, I really did. Freaks out a mom to see the lawmower all apart, she was not impressed to see it on the kitchen table tho'. I used newspapers to protect...it was raining, and it did  entertain the sibs.

Every have to get Jello out of a gas tank?  I have...it aint easy,little brother was "helping"-  but using baby sisters baby bottle brush works pretty good. Tip: don't leave sitting in the sink , Moms 'just think' all is okay when you drag all the lawnmower stuff to covered front porch...STEVE!!!  carries thru the walls of a wood frame house, and closed froint door really well and onto front porch. I knew I left that gas tank somewhere....

Switches don't break off any easier in the rain btw...

[Paddy]

I don't know if 16 and in high school counts as childhood, but I once rolled a Fiat Bianchini in the KMart parking lot whilst spinning hot donuts.

[Iain]

I'm tempted to recite exploits from Malcolm in the Middle and see who spots it.

Lived quite a tame life, in fact I've done stupider things as an 'adult' than as a kid. Childhood exploits are limited:

- Walked through the burning embers of a formerly large bonfire. Been called Shadrach ever since. I was wearing shoes.
- Attempted to smoke grass aged 10. Grass from the garden. Innocence was bliss.
- Smacked elder brother in the face with a cricket bat. Got one in return. We were about 5 and 3.
- Until I was about 11 we had a go-kart that we used to push down the street, several local kids too, as fast as we could, and then when we got to one kids drive we'd slam the handbrake on and turn it through 90 degrees. By aged 11 we were a little too big, but only stopped when I rolled the thing.
- Made bamboo bow and arrow. Got the arrow snapped by an irate older brother (guess why) and meshed the splintered ends back together and fired it again. Not particularly painful, but oh so stupid. Big splinters.
- Covered up the fact that my 6 year old cousin accidentally shot my younger brother with an air rifle. Told my parents it was from him falling on barbed wire. I doubt they believed me really.

There will be more. As an adult I've messed with petrol, I've tolerated some insane driving from friends, I attempted to bench 135lbs at 120lbs and the first time I'd ever done it, attempted to squat 135lbs at 135lbs and the first time I'd ever done it. Stupider because I definitely knew better.

[Brian Williams]

I had a few problems with homemade black powder and model rockets...  A 1/2 cup of BP and a C6-5 does not go as high as we thought...

I had a devil of a time trying to fit a patch on a vinyl swimming pool liner while still full of h20..  I wanted to find out how far a 22lr will go in water...


Powdered chlorine and suger make a great Groundhog hole smoke bomb...


Pass shooting ground hogs with a 22lr while riding a 20" Stingray bicycle down a country lane.

[280plus]

Wow, I can't think of much to top some of THIS stuff. I do share a few similarities in stories with a few though.

[Strings]

I HAVE to declare SM my hero now! And my parents thought *I* was bad!

[grampster]

It seems like there is a proclivity of the members to tamper with highly combustible materials that go whump or boom.  Cough, I totally understand that.

Does driving rapidly off the top of a steep hill in a 1949 Mercury and then cramping the wheels severely in order to see how many times one could roll the car count?

After reading this thread and then ruminating about my ill spent youth, I finally have understood why my mother told all of her friends and relatives that I was "accident prone".  Let's just leave it at that.

[auschip]

22 Cartridges WILL go off if hit hard enough with a hammer.  So will .38s.
No matter how fast you think you can run, you can't run as fast as the moving car you just jumped from.
There is a right way and a wrong way to throw out a trotline.  You only do the wrong way once.
No matter what your buddies say, shooting a bb gun at a wild bee hive is not cool.

[mfree]

I'm still relatively young :-D . Last year I found myself driving a $300 truck down the highway at 75-80mph, on four rotten tires, manual brakes that needed linings, 15/16'th of a motor, and manual steering that *might* turn the direction you want it to.

When my turn came up, I started to stop for it about six or seven hundred feet back.

I shot past it at 20mph. After locking one rear tire up.

[Guest]

Mistakes: A whole less painful and expensive if learned from someone else's mistakes - Mentor of mine.

pax has a good quote, something about how amazing it is little boys actually do live long enough to become adults.
Good grief, that lady has 5 boys, I teased her once about at what time did she 1) figure out what caused these boys  to appear, and 2) and what point did it finally dawn on her give up on having a daughter?  She had an interesting reply - only pax can express herself so well. *grin*.

Thread Drift:

Yes I have had my fun, curious times, lucky times, being a "typical kid" and I guess what pax would call "typical boy.
I have learned from others as my Mentors advised - strongly I might add.

Spring loaded center punch - When I was in retail I had bought about six new ones. One of my older employees, decided to check the new vs old ones. I was going to get new springs and have the old ones fixed up and back in "like new" condition. He used his thumbnail. I am standing there thinking to myself " he is NOT gonna do what I think he is gonna do". YeOUCH!!.  Yep- he center-punched his thumbnail with the new one.  He decided right quick he would not "test" the old one for a baseline comparison. He Flat refused to test these old ones once refurbished.

Spent enough time at a boat dock and you too will see a Boat launch a vehicle into the lake.  

My observations: a  lady (wife, gf, daughter) has enough sense to NOT want to follow the male's ( hubby, bf, daddy) instructions, even if they "start to" they have enough sense to stop. This is when the male usually 'shows the females  how it is done to save face while other males are watching. Yep - the males show them allright...

I always get a kick seeing someone use silicon spray on a office chair to make rolling easier on the linoleum floor. Really great when all the men do this, slipping and sliding all over the place with leather soled shoes.

Women may "use the wrong lubricant" on a office chair [ usually 3-in-one] - still even in heels they mangage to stay upright and walk a straight line.

Men are usually great cooks. Trying to use the tips learned from TV Chefs , like adding Alcohol to a food while cooking...and doing so on a open outdoor wood fire is entertaining....

Men say women are not "car smart" . I have never seen a women change the oil and forget to put the drain plug back in. I have observed , the oil spill in the driveway and "Honey, isn't this plug thingie part of your truck?" .

This is the part where the guy is about to blow a gasket. Having to stay calm and cool all the while needing paper towels, getting the plug out of wife's hands [ without snatching it...snatching said plug is grounds for a butt chewing, couch sleeping for a few nights, and ALL the neighbors and ALL the hubby's friends finding out "how smart" the husband is] , asking "permission" to borrow the wifes car to buy more oil.

Oh yeah...for three years after the incident - the wife can still "see" the oil spill in HER driveway. She will remind the hubby the next time in a argument he makes the "couch sleeping mistak" of using the "stupid" word in reference to how men are superior to women in mechanical stuff.

NEVER EVER PUT OIL ON A OXYGEN TANK !!.  I was little, I remember hearing the explosion and a mentor showing me the Obit in the newspaper.

I also remember as a kid the "pet deer"  puncturing the lung of the fellow that had it. Deer do not make good pets.

Back in the day Men used Aftershave a Lot.  I remember to this day the fellow leaving the Barber shop after getting his beard trimmed and lighting a cigar. The Barber told him to "give it some time".  Thank goodness the barber ran out with a towel and put that guys face fire out.

DO NOT test a power washer by putting wand over toe of tennis shoes to test "pressure". Had two guys in one week come into the ER/OR and leave with one one foot shorter than the other...

Bauxite pits are the swimming pools of death.

[Larry Ashcraft]

I didn't do too many stupid things until I started driving.  We lived out in the country and there weren't many grownups around so nobody to get in trouble *with*.

Left high school one night and took this dirt road that I had been on before.  However, I had a young date I had to impress, so I floored mom and dad's 56 Plymouth.  When I hit about 60 I realized there was this culvert in front of me that you had to go over reeeaaaalll slow.  Oops, we must have got about three feet of air before we slammed to the ground.   A few days later my dad asked me how gravel got all over the engine.

Another time, same car, same date, we were driving down highway 50 through Vineland when I decided to put the left tires in the slush in the middle of the road and floor it.  We ended up doing about three donuts down the middle of the highway at about 40 MPH.  Didn't hit anything though.

Oh, the date?  She was a cute 17 year old named Sandy.  She married me anyway and we celebrate our 35th anniversary next month.  She still isn't impressed though.

Another time, about four of us guys decided our high school needed a victory bell, and there was this unused bell on top of this elementary school (where I had incidently gone to school).  The first time they tried to get it, I was hunting deer with my dad and they got caught.  The next weekend, we tried it again, with me as wheel man.  I drove the 56 Plymouth around the block a couple times  (blocks out our way are 1/4 mile on a side) while they finished the job.  I pulled back into the school yard and we loaded the bell and the stands into the trunk and took off.

We used the bell for a couple of weeks while dragging Main.  Set it up in the back of a truck and drive around ringing it with a rope in the cab.  The we built a stand for it, painted it school colors and presented it to the school at a football game.  That was in 1966, and the school still has the same bell at football games.  There are all kinds of stories about where that bell came from and who was involved, but now you know the "real story".

[grampster]

In the 9th grade, the small cadre of terrorists that I hung with decided we wanted the cookies prominently displayed at a PTA meeting.  It just so happened that the cookies were on a family heirloom silver tray dating from around the Revolutionary War.  We didn't find that out till the cookies was 'et and the "disposable" evidence was neatly frisbied into the local crick.  ('course we didn't have frisbies then; shoulda got a patent.)

Needless to say a good long time was spent wading and feeling around in the crick looking for the tray.  Did I mention it was November in Michigan?   Did I also forget to mention that back then most of the citiy's storm sewers, all industrial sludge, and most of the pumped septage was deposited in that crick?  As Lawdog would be wont to say...sigh.

To make matters worse, we had to sit in the principals office and read a letter of apology, that we had to compose, to the entire school.  Of course 3 of us were scholars who actually knew what a dictionary was and the 4th (the one we picked to read our manifesto) was dyslexic, and who's reading skills were determined by and limited to, the naming of the colors on whatever comic book he happened to be looking at the pictures in.
Does adding fuel to the fire sound familiar here?  Also one should never laugh and poke each other while your victim is tying a millstone around YOUR neck, especially in front of the principal who used to be a professional wrestler named "Mighty Joe Young".  
Things went downhill from there.

[...has left the building.]

I'm still in my childhood at age 23...up until recently I was an avid street racer. I once raced someone on an 80 mile long sprint between two towns on the highway doing at least 130 the whole way. And it was done at night of course. I won, but I took some insane risks. Imagine changing lanes in a spot between two other vehicles that is so tight the only way to do it is diagonally...and at 120 mph.

[Guest]

let"s see- it was either making firecrackers out of .303 ammo and very short lengths of fuse (firecrackers were illegal in Connecticut, this was a classic case of the law of unintended consequences) or dropping out of school and going to live in the ghetto of a major eastern city with my girlfriend.... lessons learned- look mean, carry a weapon, and keep your mouth shut!

[atek3]

we played flaming tennis ball soccer after lighting a tennis ball on fire with lighter fluid.  It was pretty fun until we lit the dry autumn leaves on fire and had to have 4 young boys piss out a rapidly growing fire.

We made M-80's with acetone peroxide.  Unfortunately I underestimated the fuse length while I was holding in my hand, it ended up blowing about 10 feet away instead of 60 ft...  we couldn't hear so well for a while.

[grislyatoms]

Decided to set my 3" tall Batman's plastic cape on fire...

on Grandma's antique couch. I just flipped the cushion over. She didn't find it for a couple years, then blamed my Grandad (careless smoker).

Lit a small fire under Grandad's magnificent outdoor brickwork, then put a quart mayonnaise jar full of gasoline over the fire (about 3' or so). Shot the jar with my BB gun. Had to clean the soot and blackened areas of the brickwork with a toothbrush and Comet.

Threw a full shaving cream can in the burn barrel. The force of the explosion actually blew the fire out!

Decided to fill my "Popeye" plastic bubble pipe with match heads and smoke just like grandaddy. Luckily I never got to the inhaling part. As soon as I touched off the match heads, my Popeye bubble pipe became a fireball!

Sailed my 10' dinghy into the Chesapeake Bay during a 40mph nor'easter. Going out was a blast, coming back in was scary. While I was out, a large groundswell had developed (biggest waves I have ever seen on the Bay side of the beach, and I lived there for 27 years) A swell came from astern, and I surfed about halfway down the wave before turning sideways and rolling over. Getting rolled by a wave while sitting on a 300 lb hunk of fiberglass, canvas, and nylon line is not fun.
 Thank god it was a Boston Whaler, they really will not sink! Bent my mast, though, and got a nasty gash over my eye from hitting either the boat, the mast or the boom. A couple guys on the beach swam out to help me. Thanks, guys, if you're out there!

[grampster]

Reminder of the WHUMP/BOOOM commonality among members.  

[Zundfolge]

...this one time, at Band camp...

[Felonious Monk/Fignozzle]

Reminder of the WHUMP/BOOOM commonality among members.  

Mine contains bits and pieces of each of your stories.
Formative years summed up as sundry combinations of:
Whump Boom Screech Crash Clang Crunch Glug Whiz Puke and ROTFL.

[280plus]

Filling old tires with some gas, lighting them and rolling them down a hill...

[S. Williamson]

Rubber-band-propelled paper clip wars with my brother.  Somehow, I didn't figure it was time to stop when I was pulling bits of paperclip out of the wall to fire back at him.

Fireworks.  Nothing more need be explained.

Borrowing my mom's car when she was out of town for the weekend.  Yes, it will go faster than the speedometer, and yes, she will find out.

Young, 1"-diameter trees make good homemade bows.  Do not, however, fire one inside the home.  Especially more than once.

Trying to impress hte family by having dinner made by 6:00 is a good thing.  However, if boiling off alcohol from rum or whisky, do not use a large flame.  Yes, the ensuing ball of fire is observable from the living room.

Not necessarily a good a idea to jump into a stream "because I was bored and wanted to see where it went."

If you're seven years old it's a good idea to ask your dad for permission first before taking his prized racing thoroughbred for an all-day ride.

Riding lawn mowers are not ATVs.

When in Chemistry class, keep track of a beaker's contents.  HCl looks a lot like water--don't clean up a spill with your bare hands.

Related to previous:  Even if you know how to do it, and have the materials and necessary protective gear, it is not always a good idea to build a chemical battery in the middle of class.

A tree fort, made without the help of adults, is only marginally safer than setting your clothes on fire.  Still can't figure out how I never fell out of that.

Using improvised explosives to detonate red ant hills is fun.

Football in middle school.

Sledding in the middle of nowhere by yourself on a ramshackle homemade sled.

Sledding on the University of Kansas' caralon hill between classes.  People do not know you're about to hit them unless you scream "LOOK OUT!!!"

"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice..." :p  Still can't figure out how I've never broken a bone or suffered extensive scarring.

[mfree]

Ooh! Here's one I forgot

I don't know if y'all remember Construx... little plastic building blocks like a cross between legos and tinker toys. Handy little things, they locked together positively on little tiny "hubs" that had holes through them for pins and such...

....anyways, one day I got all creative and such, made a boxed frame and a release pin, made a handle, strung it with something like 4 or 6 fresh rubber bands, stretched them back to about 8", and pinned this little constructed "bolt" back.

Heh, I violated 3 of the safety rules and found out that the little plastic crossbow bolt would through-and-through the fiber panelling in the living room ceiling. Yikes.