Dumb things you did as a kid.

[ljb187]

Background

1. It's probably about 1975...I'm 9 or 10 years old. We spent our summers running around and playing outside without a whole lot of supervision.
2. There was a local street we called Country Club Hill which had a pretty steep grade for a kid - In order to climb it non-stop on our bikes we had to zigzag our way to the top. It was a big deal to get there for the first time.
3. It was the 1970s and I'm a moron.

On one of those summer days I had an idea.

I'd get one of these:



Remove the harness from one of these and tie it to the body of the wagon:



Proceed to walk to the top of the hill with this contraption wearing just a t-shirt & shorts. No shoes, no socks, no helmet...which probably didn't exist (the helmet, not the shoes and socks):



My intention was to travel down this hill in a manner never attempted before...or since I'd guess.

It was evident soon after the launch that I was in trouble. The first thing I discovered is that wagons have very little of what I now know to be rake; steering was going to be difficult. That concern vanished as I began picking up speed at an alarming rate and realized there was no way to stop. I could see there were only two possible ways of getting out of this: The first - barefeet on asphalt - caused further panic and, for the first but not the last time on this trip, pain. Now doomed, I glumly accepted option two which entailed using that lack of rake to dump this thing as quickly as possible. Desperate moments produce great men and with a hell of a lot of courage for a little kid that's what I did. There was a tumble drier effect as I acquired an assortment of injuries before rolling to a stop by a curb. No hospital required so Natural Selection was dodged this time around, but man my toes hurt.

Fortunately my friends and brother were with me on their bikes so they all rode past making fire engine sounds. The thing is, they never came back. No help forthcoming I put my deathtrap back together and walked home leaving a trail of tears and blood in my wake.

[Bwana]

If I would recount just 1 year of my childhood adventures, I would lose the little remaining respect the IWL members might still have for me....just trust me on that

[Jeannie]

Most of my stupidest actions involved boys. Prior to puberty those boys were usually my brothers and their friends and the actions were preceded by the phrase "I dare you..." Post puberty, the boys were unrelated to me by blood and the consequences of said stupidity required generous applications of chocolate and sympathy rather than band aids.

Jeannie

[crownpuller]

I grew up .... How dumb was that ?

[M. Montaigne]

I posted this in WUS, but I'll repost it here for posterity.

Comics and magazines used to have mail-order catalogs on the back cover. The weirdest thing that ever happened was when a friend and I ordered a monkey from one of those catalogs.



Of course, being rather clever, I convinced my friend that he had to keep it, and he hid it in his room. But unfortunately, the idiot tried bringing it to school one day. So, I had to stash the whole thing and decided to take it back home in the evening (in my back pack, no less).

And where did I store the monkey? That's right, in the basement...

...until our beloved cleaning lady decided to explore some foul stench emanating from the basement, and found a monkey that had crapped all over. Unsure as to what the hell was happening, she tried cleaning its cage, and the monkey decided that it wanted to explore the world.

Scratching and screaming ensued, and next thing I know, there's a monkey that's running up the basement into our home and the kitchen. And my very startled and confused mother is aghast as it decides to wreak havoc.

Until, of course, she has the common sense to just open a window and let it escape (all this while I am panicking and screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!").

Let's just say it was a long, long time before I ordered anything by mail. Anything alive anyway.

[gnuyork]

I did some stupid stuff, some things that could seriously harm me, like fall out of a tree from 30 ft up, climbing a waterfall in my bare feet, or cliff jumping into very narrow pools even higher with my crazy friends, and we all got tickets once (was a state park) while doing so - on my birthday.

Less dangerous - one of those same friends invented a crazy game. He had a room where the floor was lined with mattresses and one person would get into a sleeping bag while standing up and then they put another sleeping bag over you from the top and secure the two with a belt, then your job was to remain standing while everybody else in the room tried to knock you down. The game was called I've fallen and I can't get up and it was absolutely insane.

We also played a game we called sting pong - where you play ping pong like normal, but when you miss a point you have to lift your shirt over your head so your bare belly shows and the other person gets to nail the ball right at you as hard as possible. The anticipation of not knowing when it was coming was worse than the hit. And it left welts.

Just stuff like that... nothing too majorly crazy. I didn't mail order a monkey or anything.

[gnuyork]

Background

1. It's probably about 1975...I'm 9 or 10 years old. We spent our summers running around and playing outside without a whole lot of supervision.
2. There was a local street we called Country Club Hill which had a pretty steep grade for a kid - In order to climb it non-stop on our bikes we had to zigzag our way to the top. It was a big deal to get there for the first time.
3. It was the 1970s and I'm a moron.

On one of those summer days I had an idea.

I'd get one of these:



Remove the harness from one of these and tie it to the body of the wagon:



Proceed to walk to the top of the hill with this contraption wearing just a t-shirt & shorts. No shoes, no socks, no helmet...which probably didn't exist (the helmet, not the shoes and socks):



My intention was to travel down this hill in a manner never attempted before...or since I'd guess.

It was evident soon after the launch that I was in trouble. The first thing I discovered is that wagons have very little of what I now know to be rake; steering was going to be difficult. That concern vanished as I began picking up speed at an alarming rate and realized there was no way to stop. I could see there were only two possible ways of getting out of this: The first - barefeet on asphalt - caused further panic and, for the first but not the last time on this trip, pain. Now doomed, I glumly accepted option two which entailed using that lack of rake to dump this thing as quickly as possible. Desperate moments produce great men and with a hell of a lot of courage for a little kid that's what I did. There was a tumble drier effect as I acquired an assortment of injuries before rolling to a stop by a curb. No hospital required so Natural Selection was dodged this time around, but man my toes hurt.

Fortunately all my friends and brother were with me on their bikes so they all rode past making fire engine sounds. The thing is, they never came back. No help forthcoming I put my deathtrap back together and walked home leaving a trail of tears and blood in my wake.

That's a great story. I love it!!

[Spooky]

What the hell! Where were mail order monkeys when I was a kid!

(I set fires...)

[WWII70]

When I was growing up in London in the 60's, you could buy exotic pets at Harrods. This included what we would now consider "zoo animals" including lions. Here's a couple of guys who bought one






video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btuxO-C2IzE

I posted this in WUS, but I'll repost it here for posterity.

Comics and magazines used to have mail-order catalogs on the back cover. The weirdest thing that ever happened was when a friend and I ordered a monkey from one of those catalogs.



Of course, being rather clever, I convinced my friend that he had to keep it, and he hid it in his room. But unfortunately, the idiot tried bringing it to school one day. So, I had to stash the whole thing and decided to take it back home in the evening (in my back pack, no less).

And where did I store the monkey? That's right, in the basement...

...until our beloved cleaning lady decided to explore some foul stench emanating from the basement, and found a monkey that had crapped all over. Unsure as to what the hell was happening, she tried cleaning its cage, and the monkey decided that it wanted to explore the world.

Scratching and screaming ensued, and next thing I know, there's a monkey that's running up the basement into our home and the kitchen. And my very startled and confused mother is aghast as it decides to wreak havoc.

Until, of course, she has the common sense to just open a window and let it escape (all this while I am panicking and screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!").

Let's just say it was a long, long time before I ordered anything by mail. Anything alive anyway.

[93EXCivic]

Define kid (most of these are during teen years)

I tried building a ramp and jumping on of those Razor scooters off it. I have scars on my hands from that and 6 stitches in my eyebrow.

Riding a 50cc 3 wheeler a lot and just jumping off and hoping for the best when it flipped. Which it did a lot.

Driving a '80s Caddy around the country side with no insurance, no title for the car, no drivers license (14 at the time). It ended up in a creek.

Waking up in a tobacco barn in the middle of nowhere in just my boxers (moonshine is a terrible idea).

I never got seriously injured in my bad ideas for the most part.

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