What was the dumbest thing you did as a child?

rapture

rapture

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After reading Cross-X's thread: http://northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=8645 I decided to start a new thread. What was the dumbest thing you ever did as a child?

When I was about 8, my friend and I decided to play "war". We thought it would be fun to use darts as missles and throw them at each other, landing just a couple inches from our feet. All was going well until I reached down to pick one up, just as my friend decided to throw one. Needless to say, I got a nice dart sticking out of my face, 2 cm away from my right eye! I pulled it out (I was a tough kid) and went inside for a band-aid. His mom asked what happened, and was furious when I told her. We weren't allowed to play with each other for 3 mos after that!
 
When I was 10 or so I had those Estes Rockets and I wanted to try to make the light on the detonator work so I put 2 paper clips into the wall outlet and hooked the alligator clips to it. Thank God for the invention of the fuse.

estt2230.jpg
 
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Ok I admit it I was stupid too. I guess I was about 8 or 9 when I did this. Back in the 60's there was a show called Ripcord! on TV. I can't remember much about the show other than there were these two guys who were always jumping out of airplanes. Kinda like skydiving private eyes I think.

Yup, you guessed it. I made a parachute out of a table cloth and the clothesline and jumped off the roof of the garage. I didn't break any bones but I landed on the boat trailer. With my head. [crying] In front of both parents. [shocked]

I remember the ride to the hospital with my mom holdiing a towel on my head and my Dad threatening to kill me when we got home. The nurse shaved half of my head and I got about 10 stiches.

I have had no further desire to jump out of airplanes since then. [thinking]
 
When I was about 6 or so I wanted to pretend I was smoking a cigarette. So I rolled up a piece of construction paper and lit the end of it not thinking that it would burn really quickly.

Did I mention I was in the bathroom right in front of the towel rack? [laugh]

Thankfully it didn't spread too far and I had the presence of mind to put the towel in the toilet. And flush. Somehow the cesspool managed just fine...
 
What was the dumbest thing you did as a child?
Click to expand...
Which time?
Lighting a fire in a house under construction own by a police officer
BB gun fights almost putting an eye out
Hit friend in forehead with one wood (stitches)
Burning ticks taken off the dog. Pouring gas out of gas can onto the burning ticks BOOM!
Those are some of the memorable ones but there's lots others.
 
Moderator said:
When I was 10 or so I had those Estes Rockets and I wanted to try to make the light on the detonator work so I put 2 paper clips into the wall outlet and hooked the alligator clips to it. Thank God for the invention of the fuse.
Click to expand...

Did a similar thing by putting wire to a D-Cell on each end and put them into the wall. The funny thing is, after the instant zap of electricity and the small fire it created was put out, the D-Cell actually had a small charge afterwards.
 
We made a bomb that blew a 2 foot hole in the ground and blew out every window and the slider on the back of my friend's house...
 
My parents were out of the house for the afternoon. I was ten years old. I was hungry. I thought I'd fry some eggs. I got out the pan, dumped in a big splash of cooking oil, put the pan on the range, turned on the gas, and left the kitchen for a couple minutes.

When I came back the pan was on fire, with tons of sooty black smoke curling up out of the pan, blackening the cabinets, the walls, and the ceiling.

You have never seen a ten year old kid work so fast to get a kitchen cleaned up.

My parents never found out what happened. It was a long time before I cooked without supervision again.
 
Sticking metal objects into wall outlets was always fun, as was leaping from rooftops. But, getting hit in the face with a 5-foot long branch that had fallen 20 feet from a dead tree I had been shaking in my back yard is the dumbest thing I'll 'fess up to on a public forum.
 
derek said:
We made a bomb that blew a 2 foot hole in the ground and blew out every window and the slider on the back of my friend's house...
Click to expand...
What fun cutting the striker tips off of Kentucky Bluetip Matches![smile]
 
I read a recipe for making a smoke bomb, it was sugar and potassium nitrate. You could buy potassium nitrate at the drugstore (I wonder if you still can...). So I put it on the stove to melt (didn't know anything about double boilers) and it ignited. It made a ton of smoke, and a geyser of sticky caramel ash sprayed six feet over everything. I managed to clean a lot of it up before the parents got home.
 
I'm no longer legally a child, however I still have the mentality of one most times.

Dumbest thing pre 18: I thought I was sober enough to talk to my parents when I wasn't even sober enough to walk up the driveway. Later when I joined the Army my DS explained the Low Crawl to us, and I said SH*T Drill Sergeant! I used to practice that on my way home after every party when I was trying to get into the house!

Dumbest thing post 18: Invited my Drill Sergeant to go off the record with me in the Pit. I don't think I've ever been in as much pain before or since, including when I was playing football at Nashoba Tech with no cup on and I had a Bay Path offensive tackle put his foot squarely into my groin.
 
I have two that top the list. Not sure which was the worst, so I'll list them both:

1) When I was ~12 my father and I were doing alot of clearing of our land. He was doing all the chainsaw work of course. One day while he was at work, I though it would be a fun thing to plunge a chainsaw through a tree, letting the tip do the cutting. Lucky for me I couldn't get the saw started! (It started right up for him when he got home from work. Of course I never told him about it.)

2) I found my fathers shotgun shells. Now, I didn't even know he owned guns and didn't know the first thing about them. It didn't take me long thought to figure out some of the copper tubing we had laying around fit the shell nicely, just like a shot gun barrel. Well, then I crimped the end of the tube in the vice, went out side, slipped the cartridge in the end, and slammed the assembly onto a rock. I was delighted that the tibe went flying ~50ft in the air!! Did this until out of shells... God must have been watching over me, because I lived to talk about it... KEEP YOU'RE AMMO LOCKED UP!! (and teach your kids!)

Matt
 
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When I was little I loved Mighty Mouse (dating myself, huh? [wink] ). I wanted to fly like him, so I took a big towel, tied four strings to the corner, tied the strings together to make a sling, climbed onto a nearby garage roof and put my parachute on - needless to say it didn't work. Thankfully I didn't break anything. But boy was I disappointed! [dance]
 
My brother and I found some 22 short shells in my dad's bureau. We wanted to see if we could get them to explode so we dropped a big rock on one. only afterwards we decided it probably was not safe and we would get in big trouble.
 
> Using gasoline in dixie cups to make little "bombs".
> Jumping off the roof of the garage, until one of us broke something.
> Giving sister a "haircut" to surprise mom.
> Remember the gum that came in cigarette packs? Well, I learned the hard way that you shouldn't actually light them.

Somehow, I'm still here.[smile]
 
Another stuper of mine;

Like many kids I loved to experiment with fire. When I was around 11-12 I had a couple of my Friends over the house (a brother 9 and sister 11) we had one of those flimsy pie pan (aluminum foil ones) and we were putting little pieces of paper in it and lighting it up while in the basement. Well paper gets old so we tried some chemicals...Paint thinner. I filled the pan up about 1/8 to 1/4 of the way and lit that baby up. To this day I can believe how high the flames were. They were hitting the ceiling with was the floor for the first floor. I told the sister to get some water quick she ran up stairs and got me some, 1 Dixie cup of water later nothing happened. I decided to flip the pan over and it just went out (thank god) we were all so scared. I never told my dad about that. I remember months later I was still having panic attacks when I would think about it.
 
Where to begin???

The coke bottles full of gasoline with rags stuffed in the top?
The crew-operated slingshots made from inner tubes?
The CO2 cartridges packed with pistol powder?
Two or more of the above combined?
Saturday afternoon hikes in the hills to catch rattlesnakes?
Miscellaneous recreational activities involving dynamite? (Note: Movies notwithstanding, it is extremely difficult to shoot arrows with dynamite, or even M80s attached accurately.)
Hopping rides on slow-moving freight trains?

?????

Ken
 
KMaurer said:
Hopping rides on slow-moving freight trains?
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I did that on the garbage train from Buzzards bay across the train bridge to the Bourne side of the cape.

But I was not a kid then. It was a few years ago on a bet after leaving the port o call.
 
One was

Had a stick bow with wooden arrows and was shooting arrows at a tree with my friend hiding behind tree, he came out, picked up my arrows to hand them to me, I quickly loaded up arrow and shot in the ass, he was jumping up.down and the arrow was going up/down as the tip was caught in his pants.....Not much damage was done, boy was I scared- scared of HIS father!!!!!!!!!!!
 
OK

Billk and I decide to look for a tree fort out in the woods in January. we
were about 10-11 years old!!! this was about 9:00 am !!! we the proceed to a pond were the ice was half frozen and crossed it. We found the tree fort stayed their for a while, then went on Fort Devens.

We never told our parents were we were!! They followed our tracks about noon through the snow to the pond with open ice!!! they thought we could have drowned.

Now this is were the Harvard police, State police, fire department and the U.S. Army Gets involved!!! Every new station was there Huey helicopter from the Army and hundreds of volunteers. (I lived on Fort Devens at the time and bill lived about 1/2 mile from the Mill st gate in Harvard!!) My dad was in 10th group at the time!

Well we followed the train tracks for a while not smart enough to think that Devens , Ayer and the town of Harvard was looking fro use! we came across a couple of GIs on the tracks looking for us and asks us for our names (bill & Jeff) but we gave them the names of Ted and Fred!!!

Bill and I thought we were in a lot of trouble and did not want to get caught on Fort, in an Area we should have not been in!! So we hurried back to his house were the Fire chief picked us up 700 feet from bills house!! the bastard took credit for rescuing us were we were two min away from his house!!![angry]
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this was one of the worst I have about fifty more stories!! How we are still alive today surprises me!! I could have won the Darwin award at least twice!
 
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