Smartest thing you did as a kid!!!

[Ira]

How could I resist? I'm bored with chopping vegetables, it's 10:20AM, and I'm on my third Budweiser. I'll concede Doug started this.

My story:

My best buddy Gary Rosenthal (yeah, another Yid) were about 9. In those days, we were allowed to wonder all over Brooklyn by ourselves, even taking buses and trains.

We hiked to a canal in a secluded area near an auto dump. (And yes, Brooklyn had canals, but that would be one tough mother of a fish that could survive in one next to an auto dump.)

We're up against the water, making our plans for world domination and what we could do to have sex with Petula Clark, when all of a sudden, we're surrounded by about a dozen abandoned dogs who seemed to have turned feral.

They literally formed a perfect semi-circle around us, leaving us no way to escape except to jump into that wet stuff that used to be water. They stood their ground and barked and growled at us ferociously. We were on THEIR turf, and we were SURE we were about to get it.

It was a terrifying experience, but Charlie says, love my Good and Plenty. So I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my Good and Plenty, and hurled pieces off to the side. The dogs followed them, we ran, and lived to continue with our plans for world domination.

I swear--a true story. And in BROOKLYN, no less.

[doug hodder]

Ira...we used to go to the dump to shoot rats...one day while at the dump we found a whole bunch of cases of "Punch and Grows"...for those of you that don't know what they are...it was a plastic container with seeds in it...you punched out the top and watered and it grew....Well, these all had expired dates on them, but never the less, we hauled about 10 cases of these things home...put them in a wagon and sold them door to door for 25 cents on the dollar...We all did well for about 2 weeks, we had more money than any other kids in the neighborhood...Doug

[Podunkfla]

Ira... I think I liked the "stupid" thread better... I could write a book about the stupid things I did. I'm having a hard time remembering anything I did that could be considered smart?

[Mary K]

I was 5 and my family had just moved out to the country. We had a barn for horses, pastures and the property was surrounded by woods. One day I snuck out of the house and decided to go for a walk. I found this nice trail to follow though the woods. I think it was an old firebreak rutted path. Well you might say this is the stupidest thing I ever did as a kid, but nope, check out the stupidest thread. My dog Buffy went with me. Good dog. Anywho, not to far in (prob 200 yards) I got tired, and here is the smartest thing I ever did, I stopped and I took a nap. Well, 2 hours later Buffy and I were found. Mom said I had dirt on my face with little clean tear trails down my cheeks.

Mk

[PaulC]

Smartest thing I did was to survive some of the dumb things I did

Cheers
Paul

[asianflava]

There was this game that we'd play in 7th grade. Basically you'd smack one pencil with the end of another to see who's pencil would break first. We got good enough to where we could break one in 2 or 3 smacks.

It started as an arms race to see who could come up with a better way to cheat. Buying those 10cent pencils were getting expensive.

It started with hardwood dowels, too easy to spot so they painted them.

Those went by the wayside because they had no erasers. People figured that using an eraser from a round pencil would fit on some dowels.

They were easy to spot becuase there there was no lead inside, the next best thing was to "draw" a dot on the end to look like it had lead inside. Those were easily spotted if you knew to look.

My dad had a Unimat minature machinist lathe, I had played with it in the past cutting some rod stock that I found in the garage. Being a resourceful cheat, I chucked a dowel into the Unimat. I put a drill bit in the end and used it as a horizontal boring machine to drill out the center. I broke another pencil at the seam and got out an inch or so of lead and glued it into the hole. After sharpening, it looked and wrote like any normal pencil.

It worked like a champ, I wanted to make more to supplement my nonexistent income but I was unsuccessful. The unimat only had a 4jaw chuck. My dad (not me) lost one of the jaws to the 3jaw chuck so I couldn't use it. I couldn't get it centered well enough to make more. I asked my dad about the Unimat, apparently they are worth a lot of money now. He found it and said that since it was kept out in the garage it rusted out.

[Q]

Smartest thing I ever did as a kid was read Walden and Walking (essay) by Thoreau. That inspired me to spend a lot of time outdoors enjoying nature and not get stuck in a 40+ hour per week career.

BTW, those books are available for free download from:

www.gutenberg.org

Q

[wolfix]

Smartest thing I ever did was not to believe anything my parents told me , nor my teachers. I trusted my grandparents.

[Joseph]

I guess the smartest thing I did was to put off doing the really stupid stuff until I was old enough to enjoy it!

Joseph

[Miriam C.]

Learn to enjoy reading. Oh and quit hanging around boys who were prone to getting themselves hurt.

Not that boys will be boys, its that some kids need challanging guidance. I could have really gotten into an "outward bound" type experience.

[jgalt]

As a sophmore in high school, breaking up with that 'older woman' (a senior!) who had been flirting with me - at the time I thought she needed to grow up.

The dumbest thing was MARRYING her 18 years later. Musta lost my head for awhile I guess.

[Ira]

As a sophmore in high school, breaking up with that 'older woman' (a senior!) who had been flirting with me - at the time I thought she needed to grow up.

The dumbest thing was MARRYING her 18 years later. Musta lost my head for awhile I guess.

Wow--this sounds like some story.

But don't feel bad:

If I had the opportunity to leave my wife of 17 years to be with Stacey Glazer from high school in 1974, I would probably do something even dumber.

We're men--so the word dumb doesn't really apply to us. It has to do with our testerone.

[rooster]

Not the Smartest thing . . . .
My buddy Jim Lesniak that lived around the cornner and I were in the 5th. grade together, and as we came home from school one day we found an old tire. Well, when you live on a hill . . . . Ya, thats what we did! That tire went sailing down the hill and curved to the right, over a bank into this mans yard and we almost hit him. Needless to say he was pissed. We told him we were sorry and had to retrive the tire and take it back to where we found it.

Now the next day that tire was still there. Jim say, "We have to do something more exciting. We went to his house and got a half pint of gas and put into the tire, struck a match and sent in down the hill. We though it would burn it self out. Well it curved to the right, over a bank and into some old blackberry bushes in a vaccant lot and caught them on fire.

Jim and I attended our 50th class high school reunion and we were talking about those days. My oldest daughter said, "Dad those stories were true, you were a hoodlum." I laugh about it today and was glad that no one was hurt.

My folks never knew . . . . not until many years later.

Jim,

[Podunkfla]

Yeah... I was way too smart for my own good in my teen years too. It's a wonder I didn't get into some real trouble for some of the stupid stuff I did...

Like the time me and another kid found a length of fire hose riding our bikes home from school. Why we picked that thing up and dragged it about a mile with our bikes is beyond me? We ended up at Block's Sundries, a little neighborhood store where we usually got us an RC Cola on the way home. It so happened the RC man was delivering when we got there. I got the bright idea it would be funny to loop that hose through the bumpers of some cars parked nose in to the store and then tie it to the back of the RC truck, which was double parked behind them. I knew his routine was to lock down the drinks on the curb side and then load the handtruck on the front... He never saw the hose. I figured he'd try to take off and just stall. I hadn't figured on how heavy that truck was; and didn't even know about granny gears? He dragged those cars, bumping in to each other about a half a block! Untill he finally noticed 'em in the rear view mirror. I wish I could say we got caught and got what was coming to us... but we didn't. We just had to grow up some more before we realized how stupid... and dangerous some of our stunts were.