What's the Stupidest Thing You Ever Did as a Kid?

[kidsmoke]

Omigawd, I could fill pages, but probably my worst misadventure was as a child of about 7 or 8, with my sister a year younger. Walking to the library one day (because in the early 60's, kids walked everywhere) we stopped to admire the view from a bridge that crossed the freeway there. In that time there weren't the massive fences that there are now, and we got what we thought was a fun idea. We began picking up trash near us, and chucking it over the rail at the cars below, hoping to score a hit on a passing car.
It was just little stuff...bits of paper, soda can pull-tabs, and I remember an empty egg carton that we tore up and tossed. At the time it seemed totally innocent and fun and harmless, but now as an adult and a driver, I'm horrified at the memory and the realization of what I might have done! Even a fluttering scrap of paper might have startled a driver enough to cause them to jerk the wheel and possibly cause a collision.  
Fortunately for everyone, a nice squad car was dispatched to come talk to us, and we were given a luxurious ride home to our incredibly embarrassed parents.

 

I never did that again. We won't even talk about going to church and asking to sit up in the choir loft so that when the sermon dragged on too long, we could ball up tiny bits of kleenex and drop them into the hair of little old parishioners in the pews below us. Yep, with the same sister/accomplice.

Winner was whoever got the most bits in someone's hair. Hey, it was clean tissue!

 

I'm surprised God didn't smite us there and then.

 

 

What insanity came out of your childhood mind?  Please share.

 

 

 

[remphish1]

I grabbed coins out of a fountain because I thought they were free

[John Smith]

We would occasionally shoot arrows straight up to see if we could visually track them. Once I lost track because of the sun and balled up under a pine tree thinking that if it came down there the many branches would deflect/slow down or stop it before it got to me...they didn't. It passed through the tree cleanly and burrowed into the ground less than three feet behind me. We retired that game immediately.

[jff]

We found a garbage bag full of popcorn outside a movie theater one night.  So, naturally, we headed straight for an overpass in a remote location and tried to create a popcorn waterfall for cars going underneath to drive through. Luckily, our plan didn't really work out.  That could have caused a pretty bad crash.

[howdjadoo]

To refuse growing up,I was maimed by R&R.
 
 

[calvino]

To refuse growing up,I was maimed by R&R.

 

 

 

 

One of the stupidest things I ever did was not buying the above - with the 3D and all - when I came across it at a flea market. I had the regular record already and I think I was still collecting baseball cards - so I think I bought baseball cards with my money, instead of the record.

[LouieB]

I got a copy of that as a cut out in the bookstore of my college.  What I did stupid was actually play it a lot on cheap stereos.

 

LouieB

[lost highway]

My friend and I drank a bunch of my Mom's gin and then sprayed model airplane fuel on the patio to light on fire. What I hadn't realized is that model airplanes have two stroke engines, so there's oil in the fuel. I woke up to see a pentagram in brown on my parents' white patio. I snuck a bucket of soapy water and a brush to scrub it before they noticed, but to no avail. 13 year old boys can be dangerously stupid. In fact my career as a pot smoker indirectly ended my days of playing with fire.

[John Smith]

One of the stupidest things I ever did was not buying the above - with the 3D and all - when I came across it at a flea market. I had the regular record already and I think I was still collecting baseball cards - so I think I bought baseball cards with my money, instead of the record.

I looked at PIL in the tin can many times. Should I buy it or not? In the long run I passed on it. Big record buying mistake.

[NoJ]

After a night of under aged drinking, I knelt on the hood of a 1979 Lincoln Continental while my buddy raced around the neighborhood.

[thejokeexplained]

We called it the hot box. In the middle of a hot Summer day in North Central Texas. Me and my neighborhood click would take turns and get in a camper on the back of a pick up and crawl between the two bench seats and have pillows inclose us, shut the door to see how long we could stand it. Busting out of that camper drenching with sweat when we couldn't stand the heat any longer.

[calvino]

After a night of under aged drinking, I knelt on the hood of a 1979 Lincoln Continental while my buddy raced around the neighborhood.

 

Well at least the Lincoln had a huge hood - probably 3 or 4 of your other friends could have joined you and you all would have been fine.

[froggie]

i few of us back in primary school thought it would be fun to splash a bucket of water at a cars window as it went past. it was more fun when the windows were down    it wasnt too much fun when we got busted and some time in the principals 'house' 

[kidsmoke]

I've always thought it's kind of a wonder that any of us make it to adulthood.    

 

You know how kids grow up, and with the safety of years having passed, begin to confess some of the shit they did that you never knew about? My daughter, now coming up on age 20, recently told me that when she was about 8, she had heard about people burning leaves, and she wanted to try it. But she didn't want me to see, so she made a big pile in the narrow (20"?) space between our garage's side wall and our fence. Our wooden fence, I should add. She had some leaves in the pile that were kind of wet so she wasn't concerned. She thought it probably wouldn't even burn well.

 

She was wrong. It burned exceptionally well, high and hot, almost reaching the garage eaves! That's when she ran for the garden hose and discovered that it wouldn't reach all the way around the garage to where the pile was crackling happily. Fortunately she was able to put it out using buckets of water that must've been almost too heavy for her to lift. I'm sure sheer terror helped. Then she laboriously cleaned up so that neither her dad or I would see the burned leaves.

 

I probably thanked her for raking up leaves, if I noticed anything.

She tells me I was right in the dining room when she did this, and she was so afraid I'd look out the window and see the smoke, even if I couldn't see the flames. I'm surprised I didn't smell the smoke, but then our neighbors have a fireplace and frequently have wood fires in it, so I may have just assumed it was that, since it was on the side toward that neighbor.

Go ahead, any of you with grown children....ask them to tell you their stories. Scarier than ghost stories around a campfire in the deep, dark woods!

[Moss]

Hunting each other with BB guns. No goggles or pads. I remember getting hit in the side of the head about an inch from my eye and thinking how incredibly stupid it was, and painful. Then right back to the hunt. We actually had a rule of no head shots, then you would just peek over a hill and someone would take a shot.

[Magnetized]

I have a long list of stupid things, including running a bath then going back to bed and dozing off while the water was still running. That one was expensive!

 

But one indelible memory from my high school days was shortly after I started driving. I was 16 and in my old '55 Chevy with a carful of girlfriends. I needed to cross over a 4 lane main road--from one side feeder lane to the other--and miscalculated, causing a couple of cars to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting us. Of course, we were laughing breathlessly, fueled by adrenaline and teenage hubris. But then one of the drivers pulled off and started following us, like he was going to make a citizen's arrest. Egged on by my friends, I decided to try to outrun him. So we're barreling through the neighborhood with this solid citizen on our tail when we ran over a speed bump and my muffler fell off. Busted! We pulled over to the side and the guy came to the window to give us a good talking-to. I think I told him that we were trying to outrun him because we were unsure f his motives--not so sure he bought it. Being a good girl (and coward) at heart, I gave him my parents' phone number and he called them. He must not have said anything too bad because I don't remember a particularly severe punishment. But I learned my lesson: Make sure your muffler is securely affixed to your car! 

[jff]

Let's just say that a greasy McDonald's bag when lit on fire and thrown into a dumpster can create a raging inferno in under 30 seconds.  I skateboarded my ass home from that one in record time, while massive amounts of smoke rose high into the air.  Never got busted, though.

[kidsmoke]

Let's just say that a greasy McDonald's bag when lit on fire and thrown into a dumpster can create a raging inferno in under 30 seconds.  I skateboarded my ass home from that one in record time, while massive amounts of smoke rose high into the air.  Never got busted, though.

 

What, no pictures?

[moxiebean]

Because I liked to help my father clear brush and trees from our property and was too small to wield an axe, my parents got me a kid-sized hatchet for my 7th birthday. One day not long after I was hacking away at a fallen tree limb with my new hatchet, but was barely making a dent in the limb. I figured the hatchet must be dull so I ran my thumb over the blade to see if it was sharp or not. Yep. Pretty sharp.

 

 

[kidsmoke]

We could probably have a whole other thread about ways in which we have badly cut ourselves. For instance: Ladies, remember when you were learning to shave your legs and you took a long strip of skin off the whole front of your shin? Yep, all the ladies here just cringed at that memory.