Stupidest thing you did as a kid!!!!

[doug hodder]

We all did stupid things when we were kids...I guess that's where they get the phrase "school of hard knocks" This is one of mine....

It was 1959....and we couldn't afford a bike for me...so I got the hand me down unit from my sister...you know the type...balloon tires, step thru frame, basket on the front...well, everyone else had the nice new "boys" bikes...and I was stuck with a "chick" ride...after several hours of humiliation and pumping my butt off trying to keep up with them...I took it home...got really mad, like it's the bikes problem that I couldn't keep up... picked up a ball peen hammer and took a big swing at the bike. Unfortunately I hit the front tire, and those wonderful balloon tires, fully aired, bounced the hammer back at me, right square in the forehead and knocked me out cold....next thing I remember...Kennedy was president...and I still had that bike...I sometimes think it didn't really knock any sense into me....


So what's your stupid thing? Doug

[asianflava]

Jeez, where do I start? I'll have to think of a good one.

[sdtripper2]

Doug:

This thread is fun and yours made me smile.

Now we know Ira... should have a story to share.
I am sure there will be a few good ones.

I will have to think on this subject for a while to remember my youth.

[doug hodder]

Steve....and yours is????? doug

[Spadinator]

Well when I was about 15 my buddy and I were seeing how high we could get each other on a trampoline. You know if you bounce right before them it launches them into the air? Well by buddy won....I lost, the impact knocked me on to my back and when he came down both feet landed right in the center of my chest........Needless to say I bruised all 24 ribs, sternum, heart, lungs, diaphragm, liver, stomach, spleen, and the back of my spine where the sternum impacted.......the doc said I was lucky to have been able to walk in on my own. Thank God for Percocet!!

I have not jumped on a trampoline since then!!

[Sonetpro]

The dumbest thing I've ever done. I was hanging out with some buddies and roaming the streets we all deciieded to see who could jump up and touch the top of a stop sign.
Well I won.
Not only was I able to touch the top of the sign I was able to cup my hand over the top of it. When I let go the ring I was wearing caught the top of the sign and there I was hanging from the stop sign from my finger while my buddies were rolling on the ground laughing their a$$'s off. 22 stitch's and a sore finger for a long time.
I haven't worn a ring since.

[Ira]

Now we know Ira... should have a story to share.
I am sure there will be a few good ones.

Actually, I was pretty smart as a kid--I got stupider over time.

And like Steve, I gotta think hard on this one! So I'll be back.

It's about 6:30AM, and I have to start COOKING!

[asianflava]

Mind you this was high school, we knew what we were doing (which makes it worse) not the innocent stuff you did when you were a "kid".

We decided to crash an "island party", groups would have parties on islands that were out in the Indian River. These islands were produced when the intracoastal waterway was dredged out.

Anyway, we managed to get a ferry ride over there, we hung out and stuff. When it came time to go back we were like, "Wadda you mean they stopped running the boats at 3:00AM?" Well since we were still high school students we had to get home.

We decided to swim it in the middle of the night. Halfway thru one of the guys says, "I guess this is a bad time to mention the s-word." Right then, some fish nibbled on my feet, I freaked out. He tried to tell me that there there aren't sharks in the river. I know for a fact that I've seen at least 4ft sharks. After avoiding the sharks, the occasional boat, and the stingrays closer to shore, we made it.

Here is a pic, it is kinda grainy cause I'm doing this at work. Notice the scale at the bottom.

[SkipperSue]

I still remember before I started school asking my mother for some chocolate milk. She spooned out the powder in the cup and set it on the kitchen table before getting the milk out of the fridge. I proceed to pick up that cup and for some reason, I have no idea why I looked down in it and blew really hard! All that powder launches out at my face and I inhaled at the same time. It got all in my nose and eyes, I never saw that one coming!
Another stupid thing I did, my dad worked for an electronics supply store and always had lots of little wire cutters and other neat things. I used to stay at my grandparents house when they went to work. Well I "borrowed" a nice little pair of wire cutters with red handles. (this is still very vivid in my mind also) While at my grandparents house that day I was under a table in my uncles room. I see this wire under there and just had to try out those wire cutters. I set the cutters around that wire and gave it a good squeeze and POWWW!! Fire balls flew and I think my heart skipped a few beats. I climb out from under the table and never said anything about it. The next day when they took me to stay at their house my grandparents tell my parents about what must have happened. I admitted to the deed and had to give up the cutters, which were ruined now. That wire went to my uncles table lamp and when he had tried to turn it on that night it didn't work, busted!
And last, one I don't remember but they swear I did. The same grandparents house, grandmother had made a chocolate pie. It was setting on the kitchen table to cool. Remember those old manual hand mixers? Well I found them and proceeded to stick it in that pie and started mixing up that pie. It slung chocolate pie all over everything, walls ceiling, everywhere. They were in the living room watching tv or reading and heard me giggling and figure they better see what I was doing. By then it was too late. They said that they asked me what I was doing and I told them "I mix it up". Again I must have been to young to remember that one.

[Ira]

Stupid thing #1:

When I was 10, skateboards were the rage. Not the cool ones you have nowadays, but basically just a 2 by 4 with skate wheels on them.

The home-built ones were popular all over Brooklyn (and I guess the city), so then they started manufacturing them. So I'm on a store-bought one.

Well, we used to have "rides" and ice cream trucks that travelled block to block, blasting their arrival over loudspeakers. One day, a ride came by blasting the number one song of the day--the Beatles' "Help."

Yes, I'm that old.

I had been skateboarding with a rope tied to the front, in a lame effort to replicate the REAL wheelies that the guys do today. But when that song started playing and I started grooving and shaking my little 10-year-old ass, I pulled up on the rope REAL hard to do a GREAT wheelie.

And broke my left leg--the huge bone above your knee.

Had to wear a cast that went up to my hip for 2 months, out of school for 2 months, and when they took the cast off, my leg looked like it belonged in Biafra. (Plaster cast!)

[Ira]

Something tells me that when this thread runs its course, we're going to be looking at each other like we're all a bunch of total morons.

I mean, looking at what Skip did, he appears to have been almost RETARDED!



JUST JOKING, BUDDY!

[48Rob]

I watched a lot of Westerns as a kid, and became fascinated with gunpowder.

When we were about 9 or 10, my brother got a chemistry set for Christmas, and wouldn't you know it...all the ingedients were there...

The little vials were just that, little.
However, being the industrious little fellow I was, the local railroad tracks yeilded much sulphur in the form of mostly used flares, the basement held plenty of charcoal, and...oh never mind, no need for sombody else to try this...

Anyway, the resulting mix made a great fast burning flame.
It was much fun to lay out a long line of powder (like they did in the movies when they were going to blow something up...)
We would light it, and the flame would zip right along, pretty cool!
I don't think my folks ever figured out what those funny black lines in the road out front really were.

We lived out at the edge of town on a country road, we wouldn't have done these things if we lived in town, they were much to dangerous...we were considerate, you know...

The next trick was to pack empty ketchup bottles (the old glass kind) with this homemade gunpowder.
We inserted a wick, lit it, then ran about 20 feet and hid behind an old oak tree.

To our favor, the bombs never went off, they just looked like a 4th of July sparkler.

After giving up on that, we discovered gasoline, when poured into a pile of old concrete rubble in a depression in the ground would give us a pretty good boom!

It didn't take much, our first try was with white styrofoam coffee cups...they didn't work so well, it seems gasoline eats styrofoam...
I caught a bit of grief from my mother for stinking up the basement.

Back to the ketchup bottles...

Ah being a kid was fun!

Rob

[Nitetimes]

When you live out in the sticks as a kid the things you will do to amuse yourself boggle the mind. My list is long and often painful. If I can recall a couple of particularly good ones I'll throw 'em in after dinner.

[mikeschn]

If you're old enough to ride a motorcycle, are you still considered a kid?

The stupidest thing I can remember doing was going to a party on my motorcycle. There was plenty of beer there too. And my buddy, who had been riding motorcycles all his life, was an expert at popping wheelies on his dirt bike. I don't pop wheelies.

Well that night he was out on the street showing off, popping wheelies. The beer made me brave enough to try.

I get out on the street, and popped a wheelie... next thing I know I hear the fender rubbing on the pavement. I was going up, up and over backwards. That was the last thing I remember. I had blacked out.

When I woke up a half hour later I was laying in someone's front yard, and they were telling me not to touch my forehead. The ambulance came, and they took me to the hospital. There they stitched up the huge gash on my forehead. I was lucky that nothing else was broken, and that I didn't get run over by traffic. Pretty dumb, huh?

I didn't ride my motorcycle much after that. And the following spring when I tried to ride, I kept getting run off the road by cars that didn't see me when changing lanes. That was the final straw. I sold the motorcycle.

Mike...

[Outlaw]

This story is PG13. You may have heard the story about some dumba$$ that took a leak on an electric fence. WELL THAT WAS ME. In my early teens my buddy and I had a favorite fishing hole behind a car dealer that had a farm next to it. Keep in mind I had NEVER seen any form of livestock on the property. After a few sodas, I had to find a porta-tree to do my business. I strolled over, saw this old electric fence that I thought couldn't possibly work. Get this, I even quickly touched it to make sure it didn't work and it didn't zap me. So I fire up the pump, open the valve, and begin to saturate the entire area in the typical male way . . . spelling my name, some loop da loops, I think you get the picture. Then as I'm marking my territory, I see the electric fence and think how cool it would be to get away with pi$$ing on it. I take aim, release, and begin to give it a good soaking. I'm thinking how cool I am as this little voice is screaming inside my head NOOOOOO! About that time, ZAP!, I'm laying on the ground wondering what had just happened. Words can't describe the pain I had felt for that split second of shangra-la. I now know for the rest of my life exactly how an electric fence works. I never realized some "pulsed" current through them.

This is my story and I'm sticking to it. Just ask my buddy that still brings it up every time I see him.