Let’s see… jeeze…
When I was about 6 I wanted to play car accident, I pushed this old pedal fire truck that I’d outgrown into a tree. The problem was I was running as fast as I could while I was pushing it. Needless to say, the truck hit the tree and stopped… I didn’t… I went over the back of the truck and did what the truck did… stopped when I hit the tree, face first.
…did the same thing with a tricycle later on… I’ll never learn…
Oh yeah, never get a bottle rocket and soak it in gasoline for two days.
Because the gasoline burns the stick off. Thus making the rocket un-aerodynamic and prone to whizz around madly, while also on fire.
Unfortunately it chose me to land on, and it shot up my shirt, burned its way through my collar, set fire to the hair on the back of my head, and expoded just by my right ear. I had to have this yellow gunk all over my neck and half-bald head for a week.
The really stupid thing about this was that I was 20 when we did it.
I must be a boy.
Climbed up the local dam (blasted rock), by myself. At 7 and 8 years old, many times. Rattlesnakes do hang out in amongst warm rocks… (I didn’t meet any, but that’s probably just luck).
Walked off the roof of a barn (10 yrs old or so, I think).
Jumped into a pool that wasn’t filled completely (major spine jam into skull, couldn’t breathe properly for about 15 minutes).
Balanced on my knees on the top of a 5 ft fence to pet a strange horse, who then bit me. Hard.
Rode my bike through empty irrigation ditches in the spring - if you don’t know these things, they’re about 9-12 feet wide and about 3-4 feet deep, with straight sides. (Of course, knowing they were going to open the gates and fill them any time now, but not knowing when…)
Rode my bike at top speed through puddles of unknown depth (got launched over the handlebars once when I hit a bad pothole).
Spent a lot of time flipping over bits of debris beside roads, looking for snakes (see rattlesnake comment, above). All of 6 or so, there. Caught a fair number of garter snakes, though. Cool!
Tried to catch a runaway pony with about 5 miles of rope (okay, more like 30 feet, but enough). Got teh rope around the pony, then got my foot tangled in the rope just as the pony took off, and was dragged through prickly pear cactus for about 40 yards. Wearing shorts. :eek: (about 9 years old)
I’d actually forgotten, but this thread reminded me - used to climb any tree possible, as high as possible. Including pine trees. Never fell, though. Hmmm… I guess my fear of heights must have kicked in later.
Decided to prove I understood the concept of “ice=water that got so cold it stopped moving” and the commutative property of mathematics by deciding that “water that is not moving = ice”, by walking across the corner of a pool. At the deep end. Two years old, and my step-dad had to jump in, fully clothed, to save my clever little self. Never trust smart kids alone.
Helped my brothers blow things up and light them on fire. I didn’t often instigate, but I was right there in the smoking ruins afterwards…
Never broke a bone. Never had stitches. Never got bit by anything venomous. Never got burned. Did have to pick out cactus spines from my skin more than once. There’s more, but I don’t want to take up too much space (plus, I’m now realizing where exactly my younger son gets his …um, risk taking behavior. Yeah, that sounds better than stupid lack of caution or sense of self-preservation.).
My son jumped from the second floor roof of his school to the first floor roof and shattered his ankle. How he managed to get to the ground like that is amazing to me.
He had to go around with an unset ankle for about 3 weeks until the swelling went down enough for the orthopedic surgeon to operate. He’s got 9 metal pins and a metal plate holding that ankle together now.
Oh yeah, bottle rockets. We used to lay bottle rockets in those guns that hold caulk and shoot them at each other. One hit me on the chest and kind of stayed. I’m still amazed that it didn’t explode in my face.
Why, just the other day I was trying to grab a piece of toast that got stuck in the toaster with a metal fork. It took me a few minutes to realize what I was doing.
This is great thread - much funnier than that Gymboree thread.
My list of recollections, in no particular order:
Age 12 - winter time, shooting BB guns with friend at friend’s little brother (age 10). The little brother had one of those puffy ski jackets and his back was to us, so we just kept shooting and he wasn’t moving, so we figured he was okay. Turns out the poor kid was terrified, crying, getting hit in the legs by our shitty marksmanship. I do feel sorry now, but at the time we had to threaten him further to not tell on us.
Age 10 - my William Tell phase, convinced my little sister to hold a balloon in her hand out to the side so I could shoot it with a real arrow from a real bow. My ass still hurts sometimes from the beating I took over that incident.
Age 12 - more BB gun adventures - in the woods, shooting at my friend Greg while playing war from about 50 yards away. I apparently was a better shot because I didn’t get hit but he did, taking a BB right in the right hand above the knuckle between index finger and middle finger, about 3/4" in under the skin. A Dr. had to cut it out after it got infected.
Age 12 - summer, no school, no parents. In the closed garage. Recipe for conflagration: Pour about 3/4" of gasoline in an empty coffee can, throw in a lit match . . . a disappointing small flame, not even reaching the top of the can. So, I decide to extinguish the fire by cutting off the oxygen supply, right? Place a 2’x2’ piece of wood particle board over the can for a few seconds, thinking that would do the trick. Go to lift off the board and knock over the can . . . remaining gas still on fire, spreads out to about 3 foot circle, very impressive flames 6 feet high and lots of black smoke. Luckily burned out quickly before any damage was done to the garage, although I was probably the only 12 year old with emphysema that year.
Ages 10-13 - misc. firecracker/bottlerocket adventures. Firecracker chicken - light them at the same time to see who can hold it in their hand the longest - one guy almost lost a thumbnail. Bottlerocket artillery wars across the street. Sticking M-80’s/BlackCats firecrackers in glass bottles, sticking them in anything that didn’t move. Gene stuck one in a fresh pile of dog shit, lit it, waited, when it didn’t blow he went back to light it again. It exploded dog shit all over his face, in his mouth, in his eyes - we laughed so hard he even had a shit-eating grin on his face.
Age 11 - my Dr. Mengele phase - would capture toads and do my experiments on them - spray paint their backs day-glo orange and then release them and try to follow them through the yards. Put airplane model glue on the lid of a large glass gallon jug, put toad in the jug and watched anesthesia take effect - then I’d take him out and revive him (let him air out).
Age 10 - rock throwing - we’d get behind a shrub/hedge near a busy road - and throw rocks up in the air as high as we could and see if a passing car had the bad luck of driving into the path of our falling rocks. Only did this a couple times and never after getting chased several blocks by an enraged redneck who slammed his brakes, backed up and them came after us all 'cause he didn’t want a dent in the hood of his yellow pickup truck. Also, around the same age I decided I didn’t want that hornets next hanging in the tree in my yard, so I started throwing rocks to knock it down. One big rock finally ripped right into it and suddenly the race was on and I tried to outrun hundreds of angry hornets. Only got 4 or 5 stings, though.
Age 13: winter, bitter cold, go riding our BMX bikes on a mostly frozen creek, sliding on the ice and having a great time until Greg broke through the ice. Luckily the water was only about 3 feet deep at that place and we quickly rescued him, but I bet his nuts didn’t drop back into place until at least May.
Age 14: we decided to cross the Wabash river using the bridge, but not the sidewalk or the paved road on top. Climbed out on the girders/underside of the bridge on the frame ledge, which was about 6" wide, so you had to hold on and work your way across facing the bridge and not the water and holding on for dear life for the 100 yards or so of the bridge span. At least had the sense to walk back on the bridge sidewalk instead of taking a chance at falling in trying it again.
Age 16: On the day I got my license to drive, picked up my buddy Rob and headed out in my '72 Dodge Dart. He said it wouldn’t go 100 mph. I said it would. Hit 104 on the divided highway, but I had to use both lanes and part of the shoulder since that piece of shit car would swerve all over the highway once you hit 50 or so.
Amazingly, I never got killed or even seriously hurt. My punishment though: I now have two boys of my own.
At age 10 I tried to repell down the side of my house with no gloves and a cheap piece of rope. I bounced off the house once, then the rope burned my hands and I fell about 15 feet, landing on my back. Luckily I fell on grass and not cement. My dad found me, the look of disbelief on his face is something I will never forget.
That sounds cool! I want to do that!
Being the youngest of six I didn’t do much stupid stuff but got to watch older siblings do stupid stuff.
While on a Boy Scout Camping trip in the jungle in the Phillipeans my brother found some interestng ‘things’ and brought them back home with him in his pack. Later the Air Force some some special guys over to dispose of the unexploded Japanese artillery shells. (1968)
Another brother set his hair on fire while getting a close look at a flame from a lighter.
As for me, well, let me just point out that large trash bags do NOT make good parachuttes.
Wheee!!!
Punched a steer in the head, 'cause I felt like I was as bad as Conan… result: one crushed hand needing reconstruction.
used to race cars backwards through a small country town (twisty two-lane roads) I AM the King of Reverse!
Whilst carrying concrete blocks at a friends house, and noting that it was a drag to walk all the way around the brick wall… I decided to make a bridge from the top of the block pile to the top of the wall using a swingset ladder, which promptly folded… stiches in my forehead (I looked like Frankenstien)
a couple of cousins and a sister and I took it upon ourselves to ambush cars in a suburban neighborhood by throwing green plums at them… my aunt picked up over 100 that had been used in this manner.
rewiring my car (the one I raced backwards) for a stereo I got an intermittant short in the wiring harness… sometimes the whole electrical system would just go out… headlights and all… 'course I drove it anyway… the stupid part is that I thought it would be a good idea to practice… in case the lights went out… so I would be driving around (I lived back up the country at this point) like a teenage boy (which means in excess of 100 mph) and… TURN OFF THE HEADLIGHTS… never did wreck it though…
more and more… but those are some highlights I might add a few more later.
Geez…and I used to wonder where the stunts for Jack Ass came from…it is all clear to me now…
Not that I am calling anyone a Jack Ass…
My son opened the door to the car when he was 18 months old, we were going 70 mph at the time…thank god he was strapped into a car seat!
Margo
Margo
Am I the only one who thought this was a thread about lighting farts??
guess so.
Ah the memories of near death. When I was six I decided to make supper before mom got home. When she came in the door I proudly anounced that fact from the kitchen. She said she thought I was making PB&J sammiches or other such tyke fare. Then she rounded the corner to the kitchen and saw I was making… french fries. I had carefully peeled and sliced some spuds and had them bubbling away nicely in hot oil on an iron skillet on an electric stove. Until that point I was not aware that my mother’s head could turn completely inside out.
Another time I came home from school and kicked off my boots. I wore wellington style slip on boots now called ropers. (a style I still wear in fact) Mom got me loose boots I could grow into so I kicked of one and it flipped and landed on the living room floor. I kicked off the other and the entire world went into slow motion. The boot flipped end over end like a perfect field goal, straight into the dining room… straight toward the hanging light fixture with the two foot wide glass shade. The best place kicker in the NFL couldn’t have aimed that ***ker any better. boom-spark-bzzt-ksssshhhhhhhhh as a shower of glass rained on the dining room table.
In my 20s a navy buddy and I owned nearly identical VW rabbits that we had midly hot rodded. After doing some suspension tuning we wanted to know if the inside back tire would come off the ground like we had seen in Bilstein cup races. Our proving ground was the cloverleaf at Miramar road and highway 805 in San Diego. I entered the 25mph cloverleaf at 54 and settled into a good steady state right turn. My buddy, Martin, put his head and shoulders out the passenger window so he could see the right rear tire. He verified that the tire was off the ground long enough to stop rotating completely.
The same friend and I did some controlled experiments and discovered that when riding a motorcycle on the freeway your ball caps will fall off at precisely 135mph.
How the hell did I live this long?
Oh my…
My ex-husband (yes, you’ll see why in a second)…
…blew up his girlfriend in high school. Not terminally, but he made what he’d hoped would be a cannon with a pipe and some black powder, and it turned out to be a better pipe bomb than cannon. She had more than 100 stiches.
And her father was the shop teacher. He failed shop that year.
Not satisfied with that, he decided to play Tarzan with a rope on a tree. So far so good, but when he let go the rope it was over some concrete debris with rebar sticking out of it. Even now when he wears tight pants, you can see that scar on his ass. How he managed to unimpale his ass from the rebar, I will never know.
Our son went through a stage at 5 where he became fascinated by electricity. We had to lock up the fuse box. And take away his lamp when he discovered that cool things happen when you take out the light bulb and put in a penny instead.
Me, I just used to read on the roof… 
Grace
Grace
When I was in the first and second grade, I went down the stairs in a laundry basket, on different occasions. Every time I went down, on the last stair, the basket would flip over. You’d think I figured, after the first time I busted my head on the floor, that I would put pillows down there or something, I didn’t. The bumps on my head were so bad, that my mother kept me home so that the school wouldn’t accuse her of beating me.
For the most part, I always thought I was unlike most guys, untill I saw the movie Jackass. I was laughing so hard, but the amazing thing is I actually said to myself “that looks fun.”
This happened last summer, while I was still 15. My grandparents, every summer, take my cousins, brothers, and I to Morro Bay. Just before we were about to leave, my little brother dares me to run down a little hill at full speed. The hill wasn’t that tall, but it was fairly steep. In my infinite wisdom, I take him up on that dare. Everything is going good, until I get near the bottom (everything always happens when I get near the bottom). I tripped over my own feet, and went flying onto the asphalt. I slid and bounched about ten feet. I lay there for a few seconds, get up, and go to the area where my grandparents were at. I’m a bloodied, and the first thing my grandmother says to me “and what did we learn not to do today?”
Other than a few incidents, I just did the normal, jumping off roofs, purposley crashing my bike in order to fly through the air, making designs on the floor with matches and lighting them in order to see the flames go in a pattern. Just normal guy stuff.
How do we survive to adulthood?
Stupid things boys do? Why, date girls, of course.
What! No one else rides on the roof racks of cars?
Friends parents had station wagons. We were on a long road trip. He was tired of driving, and in teen-age boy wisdom, it would be better to swap seats at speed instead of stopping like normal people. I climbed out the passenger side window, held on to th luggage rack, slid across the roof, climbed into the drivers window. When it was all said and done, I’d say it worked out fine.
I am still here.
This thread brings back memories of last summer.
Picture this: Big party out in some field, probably 35-40 people there. There’s a pretty big bonfire blazing. Some idiot decided to throw a gas can on the fire that is HALF-FULL OF GASOLINE! It pretty much exploded and made the fire expand in like a 10-foot radius. Some people got their hair singed, it was that close to them. Luckily, no one was hurt.
Another party. Another fire. This time someone throws a hay bale on the fire. Has the same sort of effect. That was the last of the parties at that guys house!
Oh I forgot a few.
2)My brother and I would take some watered down gasoline (about a 50-50 mix) place ti in a pan, and then toss lit matches into it as hard as we could. First to catch the gas on fire loses.
5 trees each about 15 feet tall had to be removed from a friends house. So we chopped em all up and piled them into the middle of our yard (we have 5 acres) Add 2 gallons of gasoline as accelerant and countless gallons of alcholic beverages for entertainment. I only caught fire twice that night. 
we havent done this yet but, my brother’s seriously pyro friend has bought an engine block made of a magnesium alloy. The only reason we haven’t lit it yet is A) not enough welding gogles and B) we haven’t finished constructing the lighting mechanism yet.
Me:
Did the battery in the electrical outlet thing at school in 3rd grade. Didn’t catch anything on fire, but four classrooms were without power for a good hour while the janitors tried to find the breaker box.
When I was eight, I decided that Dad’s soldering iron looked easy enough to use. Splattered hot solder in my eye, dropped the iron on the rug, and in attempting to pick it up and put out the fire, grabbed the hot end. End result? Third degree burn on my hand, great big red spot on my eyeball and a one foot burn mark on the living room rug. Once I was back from the doctor, I was sent to bed right after supper for something like a month.
Built a block and tackle when I was ten and tried to hoist myself up to the roof of the barn at my uncle’s house. Made it up about ten feet before my lack of sound mechanical engineering technique reared it’s ugly head and the rig broke, dropping me flat on my ass.
Took our sailboat out by myself when I was 14. I know how to sail, but this particular boat was a 32 foot ketch that wasn’t set up for single-handing. Came fairly close to sinking the boat and drowning myself before I got back to the anchorage.
Got into a fight with my best friend when I was 16 and somehow we decided that the best way to settle things was to chase each other through the streets in our cars “Streets of San Francisco” style. Got a nice phone call from Officer Friendly on that one.
My Brother:
At three years old, figured out where the keys to the riding lawnmower were and actually made it out to the garage, up onto the tractor and had the engine started by the time my mom caught up with him.
Third day of kindergarten - he convinces three of his classmates to jump on the other end of the see-saw at school, launching him a good six or eight feet into the air (according to the teacher) and resulting in a split lip and black eye.
Later that same school year - he becomes fascinated by the little iguana that they had in an aquarium behind teacher’s desk. He steals it, brings smuggles it home and then is surprised and shocked when he rolls over onto it during the night and it decides to fight back by clawing him.
At twelve, he did the classic “I’m going to use this blanket as my cape and be Superman off the roof of the house” thing. Broken collarbone from that one.
At 14, he decides to pick a fight with THE biggest, baddest, meanest son of a bitch three grades above him. He gets the crap beat out of him and then calls the kid names as the principal is dragging him off.
My cousin:
There was the hunting incident, the dirt bike incident, the car rolling over him in the garage incident, the throwing rocks while swimming incident, the firecrakser in the thanksgiving turkey incident …
Well, you ge the idea. I could write a book 