Your "stupid kid" phase

[WillBrink]

This thread got me to thinking* but OT to the thread, so I'm starting this one. Stupid kid phase. I think we all forget we had it, some clearly worse than others due to various reasons, but we had it. Some of mine, not for public consumption, but here's one:

70s, Brooklyn NY. I'm maybe 12-13 ish I recall. My friends bet me I couldn't jump across between buildings of what was narrow ally between the buildings. Maybe 6', but it was 30 years ago, so guessing there. It was 6 floors up. I made it. Had I not, that would have been all she wrote for me. My poor mother only knew of a fraction of such behavior. Told her a bunch of them when I was older and she looked ill. In retrospect, luck to be here. I can say, some of my friends from the time, not so lucky.

Yes, kids left to their own devices, minus parental supervision, can come up with some really dumb things to do for entertainment and thrills. BTDT. Glad I survived that "phase" :eek:

Assuming statute of limitations is up, what you got?

* = https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=114747

[GeorgiaBoy]

I honestly can't say I ever had one.

I grew up a very mature kid. I had an ingrained since of personal responsibility and safety. The most dangerous thing I probably ever did was drag race on occasion after I turned 16 on backroads. Never went over 100, and always did it on long straightaways. Not very dangerous.

I never drank much either, even when all the rest of my friends were experimenting with it in their teens. I drank a little, never getting more than a heavy buzz. I just hate the feeling of not begin in control of my own mind and body, and not knowing what I am doing. I often DD'd because of that, I liked making sure my friends stayed safe and didn't drive drunk. To this day I still don't get drunk, and I'm in my late 20's. I'll go out and party, but never get plastered. Just hate the feeling. I did the same with weed in my first years of college. Tried it a few times, didn't like the affects, quit.

One might say I had a boring childhood but at least I'm glad to say I never got hurt.

[Magic_Salad0892]

I like the think I grew up pretty mature, but maturity doesn't count for much when you have no regard for your own personal safety.

[ryr8828]

67 Mustang with 390 I had when I was 17. I buried the speedometer at 140 and it was still picking up speed. My buddy begged me to slow down, I'm glad he did.
Riding a motorcycle at high speeds after drinking when in my teens.

I'm happy to be alive, and convinced that Mom and Grandma's prayers saved me from myself.

[jaxman7]

When my best friend (we still are best friends to this day) and I were 15 we had this neighbor who was a Vietnam veteran. Not to his credit he showed 2 very normal boys how to make a homemade bomb.

This was quite a bit before 11 Sep. 01 so keep that in mind. With this new manly and desirable knowledge we set out to make our own. Borrowed my bud's dad's blackpowder, some nails for the cool shrapnel effect and some other house items and went to work.

Our target was an old abandoned house in the woods about 300 yards down the road. We brought everything down to the house that would soon face our teenage destructive curiosity including a fire extinguisher we 'borrowed'. Hey....safety first. ;)

We placed the bomb in the sink of the old house and I light the (rather ingeniously designed by yours truly) fuse and ran for the outdoors and cover. After waiting much longer than anticipated a huge explosion erupted. We ran in. Extinguisher just a'blazin. After the dust cleared the sink had been turned into the size of a bathtub and there were nails EVERYWHERE. Both of us looked at each other with great satisfaction....until we hear a piercing scream from a girl, "Call the Fire Department!". I'll never forgot the look on my friends face when we heard that scream. Not doubt my face mirrored his.

As fast a humanely possible we gather all our gear and ran in the opposite direction of the scream. Little did we know that 50 yards to the left of the house through the trees was a perfectly liveable house with people in it. We stashed our stuff underneath some brush and just basically stuck our hands in our pockets, whistled away and tried to blend in while walking (and freaking out on the inside) back to my friend's house.

Later on we would discover there was a huge investigation afterwards. The fire marshal was there as well as the chief of police. Not my brightest day but great memories.

I have another sparkler bomb story that left my left eye difficult to see through for a week and I ended up covered in hundreds of little pieces of electrical tape but I'll save that one for later. I look back now and am amazed I have all my fingers, toes, ears, and eyes!


-Jax

[jaxman7]

Double post

[Kfgk14]

Oh, plenty of nights consuming underage/illegal substances, being wild with my friends and too many girls...

Never did really stupid stuff in a car with alcohol or other inhibitors of brain function (excepting women I really needed to impress ;)). But I did do my share of sketchy, high speed backroads driving. I can still drift a Crown Vic like nobody's business :rolleyes:

My buddies and I shot up an old shack out in the woods with some borrowed shotguns and revolvers. Felt like regular gun slingers. So we decided (against my better judgement, but hey, dumb kids right?) to rig up a flamethrower and burn the place out, "Nam style" as we thought of it. After trial and error in a sand pit (highly dangerous, do not attempt), we burned down the shack, to our utter glee.

All fun and games, til i go think on it and remember how close the trees overhung. Coulda burned the whole county if we hadn't been so damn lucky with the rain...not to mention screwing around with fire in general.

Dumb kid days...I'm lucky I lived, the driving and general pyrotechnics experimentation probably should have wiped me out, let alone the extent I'd go to chasing girls...

[Jellybean]

Wow. I'm definately boring as hell. :laugh:

I think the worst it got was the phase that I'm sure every kid has gone through- playing with fire (literally).
That was cured VERY quickly when my brother and I (mostly I) accidentally set our woods on fire. Thank God it was just an enhanced brush fire that got a little out of control- fire department was not needed. But it was close, being on a windy day and all.
My dad was PISSED.
Although I still enjoy making "enhanced" lighters. :D

[Honu]

usually stupid stuff to ourselves :)

compound bow and if you have been to the islands you know the trade winds
we used to shoot up into the wind and see who could get closest to the arrow coming back down !!!! except that was in our late 20s :) hahah stupid yup :) about as going spear fishing at night in tiger shark waters ! or boogie boarding behind one of the commercial dive boats we used to work on in tiger shark waters and hope we did not fall off !!! stupid when I think back but kinda exciting when doing it freaky when waiting for the boat to turn around and get you !!!

jumping off cliffs into really shallow water depending on the waves either 3 feet or 8 feet :) 25 feet into 3 feet hurts really bad !

typical roman candle fights things like that

stupid things that kids could do in the 70s and 80s and not have the cops called on them :)

[RancidSumo]

I must be boring. I'm twenty with nothing interesting to report.

I don't know how I ended up this way considering the stories I've heard of my dad's youth (I am honestly extremely surprised that he ended up an engineer and not dead or in prison). Like the time he built a cannon out of some pipe and mounted in the back of his old cruiser so he could drive it around and destroy things. As if it wasn't obvious who was doing it when there were a bunch of blown up road signs and one guy driving around with a cannon.

I'm not sure if I've missed out or if I'm the lucky one...

[Zhurdan]

Threw an M70 into a red ant pile once. Wasn't really unsafe, but it sure was uncomfortable for anyone within a 50 foot radius.
:D

[jaxman7]

Another one would be playing demolition derby with my car and the local trash cans put out at the end of driveways the night before trash pickup day!

-Jax

[WillBrink]

I must be boring. I'm twenty with nothing interesting to report.


I blame that on good parenting! :D

[jwfuhrman]

I'd have to say my dumbest years were from when I turned 20 til 25. I had started playing paintball as a hobby and then it progressed intoplaying at the national level by the time I was 20. The "National/Pro" level of paintball there is alot of Drug and Alcohol use. Well, I was set to get married at 20(yea, dumbass idea), and 3 months before the date, my ex-fiancee cheats on me with my best friend at the time. My dumbass, being the sucker that I was, forgave her and we carried on. 3 days before our wedding, she tells me she's leaving, wants nothing to do with me. Granted, I wasn't using drugs or even drinking at this time yet, I was the "responsible" one in the paintball world that didnt do that stuff.

Well, after she left, I was incredibly depressed, never said a word to my teammates or friends that I was. They all knew what happened, hell half of them were in my wedding party, and they just thought I was taking it in stride and making the best of it. Well, I started doing the drugs, I tried damn near anything that didn't have to be used with a needle. Coke, X, Speed. I started partying hard. We would be gone for a week at a time, at 20-25 half way across the country in cities like San Diego, Phoenix, Chicago, Orlando, Denver for tournaments and I would just party as hard as I could.

What stopped me was meeting an awesome girl, who is now an ex, but we are very close friends yet. She basically honestly saved me from that lifestyle. I soon after quit playing paintball and got into shooting again(shot CMP High Power and Small Bore in High School). Now, I drink occasionally with my classmates from my EMT and Paramedic classes, and I run the Indiana Multigun Series, which by the way, just finished with a fantastic ending(3Gun Nation style shoot off for the Top 16 from the year, and looking like its going to be even better next year).

Never really told anyone this story before.......

[Suwannee Tim]

I was a pyromaniac back when it was just good clean fun. I got burned several times. You can't properly claim to be a pyro without burn scars. I quit when I almost blew myself and my buddy to smithereens. Other than that I wasn't particularly stupid. I'm old enough to have several childhood friends and classmates dead of diseases related to high risk lifestyles. Hepatitis, hepatitis induced liver cancer, cirrhosis of the liver have taken several, accidents several others.

[TehLlama]

When getting married at age 21 is the most sound decision made at the time...

Having a best friend who is also really gifted at engineering ways to make fireworks even more dangerous, or finding new ways to make carbon arc torches in the classroom always helps.