I was a classic latchkey kid, and a bit of a terror. For years my dad would complain about the black tire stretch marks on the street in front of our house, but never could figure out where they were coming from. :smack:
The street was kinda our playground. By “our” I mean my brother, a few friends and me.
Some of our favorite “activities”:
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We’d run a line of black electrical tape between trees, and across the street about windshield high. Drivers doing ~40 mph wouldn’t see the tape until it was right on top of them, and even then I highly doubt they knew it was tape in that instant. They’d just instinctively lock up the breaks, and slide through the tape before skidding to a halt. That was usually followed by getting out to inspect what had happened and swearing… a lot. Of course we were all to well hidden to be caught. My parents weren’t home, but strangely none of the other adult neighbors ever intervened.[/ul]
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Kid across the street lived with his very old grandparents who slept most of the time. We’d raid the old folks’ fridge of eggs, pudding cups, tubs of butter, anything that would splat. Then we’d climb up on the roof, and crouch down on the backside of the pitch, out of view from the street. Then we’d lob perishables at passing cars. Tell yeah, I had quite an arm back then, and deadly aim. THUMP, tires locked, squealing skid to a halt. They’d always get out and look around for whoever did it, but NEVER found us on the roof.[/ul]
What about y’all? Share some dumb/fun things you did when you were a kid, but wouldn’t recommend your own kids repeat today.
Nothing specific, but when I was 7 we moved into a brand-new neighborhood. So brand-new, ours was one of the first completed houses, and there were only maybe a dozen other families moved in. The rest of the very large subdivision was still in various states of completion, from nearly finished to just an outline for a big hole spray-painted on the dirt, and everything in between. We were basically living inside a giant construction site.
As you can imagine, to a little kid this was like paradise! My brother and I, and whatever other kids were around that we could find, liked to wander amongst the unfinished homes, climb around the framing, crawl around the basement holes, basically just get into whatever trouble we could find, and there was a considerable amount of trouble to be found everywhere. I remember crawling through holes that we weren’t necessarily certain we could get back through. Good thing the construction workers were careful about taking the keys to the heavy equipment with them…
Yeah, we thought throwing snowballs at cars - or CTA busses - was just good clean fun. Would laugh about drivers who “went crazy!” after being hit. (We were jerks!)
We lived in Chicago’s bungalow belt and would periodically would run from roof to roof. The houses were only 6’ apart - the eaves more like 3’. We’d climb out an upstairs window and then run up one side, dow3n the other, jump, and repeat to the end of the block.
My dad moved into the same house in 1927. He used to talk about tying a rope across the streetcar wires to make the trolley fall off.
Same here, starting in 1987 and age 7 - 10 maybe. With some regularity, we’d have our shoe filling with blood after stepping on a rusty nail. Got taken to the doctor, foot cleaned and bandaged, tetanus injection. By the third time we weren’t even scared anymore, just annoyed.
But I might say, we knew what’s acceptable. To the best of my conscience, I never did anything that would delay construction. That one asshole kid once got his parents a police report after filling a chimney with debris.
One neighborhood I lived in as a kid had homes with metal garage doors. We would ride down the street after dark with a couple pockets full of pebbles and rocks and heave them at the doors, seeing who could make the loudest “bang!” Of course, being on bikes meant a quick get away. Jerks, we were.
I spilled my criminal behaviour(teenage graffiti) and my thread got closed down. We ( sibs,friends and I) got up to anything we thought about. A few times we were caught by an irate homeowner and chewed out. My younger brother got brought home by police a few times, he was kinda stupid and got himself caught.
My friend and I once found a bottle of spanish fly on the side of the road, so naturally we went to his house and squirted it in his mom’s drink to see if she would try to hump me.
Another of our favorites was to lie sprawled out on the side of the road, as if we’d been belted by a car and left for dead.
Surpringly, most passing cars took the bait and stopped to render aid. Of course, when they closed in on foot, we’d hop up and fake a yawn implying we had just been taking a nap.
Once while hanging around the grounds after school, a couple of us found panties and a used/loaded rubber at the edge of the kickball field. So naturally, I picked them with a stick and taped the nefarious objects of unbridled passion to the window of my homeroom class. And you can be sure I was there early the next day to witness the reactions.
On a less travelled lane we would raid the garbage for cereal boxes and other boxes tape them.up and sack 'em. Set the bag on the side of the shoulder and hide in a tree. Nearly everyone stopped to get the free bag of groceries. Some laughed, knowing it was a prank. Others would kicked the trash allover the road, cursing. We never got tired of that.
My intrepid, inventive Stuntman Mike, out of idle curiousity, was this latest little slice of gospel truth before or after you used your brilliant, Machiavellian-like wit to orchestrate the savage, brutal beating of your school’s resident weakling, loser “Melvin” at the hands of the popular yet vicious Homecoming King/Jock for your genteel amusement?
If so, please, why don’t you tell us another one, Professor?
I have a funny feeling you can keep 'em coming all night long!
I remember doing this with my brother when I was little, only we used twine. At least, I’m certain it was only twine, not something thicker. Our idea was that my brother would go across the street and each of us would hold an end at about waist level, then when a car got near enough, we’d lower the twine so it could drive over. We were on a narrow side street near a corner so cars naturally went slowly. We figured if we didn’t lower the twine in time, it would just break when the car ran into it.
Anyway, things went as planned for the first couple of cars, then the next one stopped just before getting to us and the driver got out and yelled at us. Kinda put the kibosh on our fun.
A few years later, after we moved to a different house, our parents put a lock on the closet in the den. My brother found out the combination somehow and knew they were hiding our Christmas presents in there. So, one day when they were both out, he unlocked the closet and we carefully unwrapped our presents, had a look at them, then carefully wrapped them again. Even then, I was sure we didn’t do as neat a job as my parents had, but, to their credit, they never let on that they knew what we’d been up to.
I once faked my brother’s kidnapping and my own murder simultaneously. Man, that went over like a lead balloon when dad got home.
As usual, my brother and I were home alone, when I thought it’d be hilarious to stage a violent crime scene. I turned over a bunch of furniture, and really tore the place up good to make it look like an epic struggle had ensued. Then I stuffed my little brother in a closet, took off my clothes and smeared a mixture of ketchup and A1 sauce all over my body. Then I tucked the business end of a chef’s knife into my armpit, and lied down on the living room floor to play dead, but not before taping a note to the front door that read something like, “The big one’s dead, and the little one’s with me. We’ll call tonight with instructions.”
Dad was first to arrive on scene, home from work around dinner time… and bought my staged pitch like the gullible champ he always was. He rushed over to me with the seriousness that would be expected of a dad who’s just found his kid brutally murdered.
Then I rolled over laughing.
Dad? Not so much. I didn’t sit for a few days after that stunt. My brother played the “he made me do it” card, and got off scott free. :smack:
Me and my younger brother were out on the prowl late one afternoon. I climbed a tree to try to get away from his annoying ass. I went really high, I was a good climber. Of course his pudgy self couldn’t get as high as me and he started crying. I climbed down over him to the ground and was about to tell him how to get down, when, SURPRISE he landed on his head at my feet. I nudged him with a toe and he didn’t move. I walked home and my Mother asked where he was. I told her he was dead and walked upstairs. I guess she needed a minute to digest. I had time to change my shorts to jeans before she got up the stairs. She made me take her to the tree on the next block. His sorry ass was sitting on the porch of the house near-by eating ice cream, claiming he had amnesia. Calling the old lady Gramma. He, somehow remembered his name before we got home. And I got a lecture. Of course.
Yeah, probably because we weren’t yet teenagers, there wasn’t a destructive element to it at all. It was primarily just exploring and having a really great, ever-changing playground that was kind of a lot more dangerous than we thought it was at the time.
Maybe we were more conceptual (or just cheaper), but we didn’t use tape or twine.
We mimed stretching a wire across the street.
Our arch-nemeses were cars that drove too fast down OUR little street. So we were ecstatic when they fell for our elaborate setup. Which culminated with Scotty wrapping one end of our high-tensile-strength aircraft-grade wire around a tree, and the rest of us across the street, pulling with all our strength on the other end of the wire.
Jerky high school guys in muscle cars going 40 would slam on the brakes and skid between us at 10 mph, at which point we’d all snap backward in a pile on Gary’s lawn… followed by a full speed sprint through the backyards in case the “hoods” chased after us.
