I remember there was a big hill by my house. Part of it had woods on it, part didn’t. Well, we carved a sledding track around a tree or two. Little sleds can be pretty maneuverable. Well, until you pound into the big tree at the bottom like I did.
Se, I got the idea that going face first would be more fun (which it was). I had an old wooden sled whose skids dug into the snow and brought me to an abrupt stop. That flung me forward right into the tree, which should probably have broken my collarbone.
It didn’t, so we did it again and kept playing for the rest of the day. No casualties, no permanent damage.
Well, Three Stooges. I still have yet to find a woman who likes the Three Stooges.
But lets see, growing up, some things that tended to be single-sex? Oh, dodgeball. When I was a kid, we played dodgeball up against a brick wall. There was a lot of aiming for the head…that can be especially painful when you’re just in front of the wall. That was pretty exclusively a boy acctivity.
People…actually *do *this? Often enough that there’s a *name *for it? Ugh.
I was the world’s biggest tomboy as a child (still am, actually–I’m a nerdy guy trapped in a female body) but I was never into risk-taking or particularly strenuous activities. I remember being annoyed at myself that I was fairly annoyed at myself for being such a wuss, but I didn’t want to risk getting hurt or punished (my parents were great but they were strict about that sort of thing) so I didn’t do it. So I guess in that way I was more the typical girl, though it definitely had nothing to do with being “girly” in any way. I was sort of a butch Hermione Granger.
I, on the other hand did this on a toboggan–the kind with the curl. I stuck my head under and headed down the hill blind “just to see what would happen”. Well, I hit the tree literally head on, and somehow managed to break my arm. I remember my first reaction being “do I have brain damage?!! Do I have brain damage!!!” because I had recently seen a film version of Hans Brinker in which Hans’ father became brain damaged after something heavy falling on him at work.
The other time I ran around shouting “do I have brain damage??!!! Do I have brain damage???!!!” was when I decided to jump a ramp on my bike. It was one of those long banana seat Schwinns, not a short BMX type bike better suited to this type of endeavor. I had to build the ramp myself, so when I was done with “up” ramp, I was too impatient to wait, so I did my Knievel impression without bothering to build a “down” ramp. I landed on my head.
Man, my childhood was lame compared to yours. Guess I’ve really never been that much of a guy. The worst I ever did was bury fireworks in cowpats. Cause, y’know, the only thing funnier than a shit geyser is shit splatter that might just land on your head. I once cut up silk sheets to make GI-Joe parachutes that’d be more historically authentic. That didn’t went well either. I did the BB gun forest fight thing when I was 16 though, so there’s that.
Oh, and my best friend and I used to build pillow mines where the He-Men slaves were forced to toil and die by their Playmobil overlords while *they *whipped naked Barbies in the comfort of their luxurious castle ; but I think that’s less “boys being boys” and more “freaks being weirdoes”
Well, it was my sister’s idea for the two of us to snort Lik-'em-ade.
It was also her idea to make designs with Lysol spray on the carpet and light it on fire. Then we got a little overzealous and the carpet got scorched, so we poured wine on it to disguise the burn marks. Better to be punished for trying to steal our parents’ wine than for trying to set the house on fire.
Come to think of it, it was also her idea for the Great Wasp War. Remember those plastic rulers they gave you in school? Well, she and I were in the 6th and 5th grade respectively, she enlisted me into the war on dumpster wasps. The schoolyard had a grey dumpster, the lid was closed, so wasps would have to land on the side and squeeze through the space between the lid and the side. As they were doing so, you’d bend back your ruler, then with a loud elastic SNAP! you could crush or fling your prey like a catapult.
The object of the game was to have the biggest pile of dead yellow jackets by the end of recess. I only got stung the one time.
Oh! And cracker eating contests! You try to see who can stuff the most saltines in their mouth at one time. When you laugh, it sprays crumbs everywhere.
This might sound a little creepy but I used to kill or stun mosquitoes and watch for hours as I fed them to various ant hill colonies in my parents yard. It was so cool watching the ants take their prey down into the hole. I can’t picture a girl doing or enjoying this.
Snerk…jesus, reminds me of my childhood. I was the minion of a couple of boys 3-4 years older than myself, was nearly terminally gullible and suffered grievously from that Optimism Bias mentioned upthread. Mix that up and add in 3 cheapo BMX style bikes, some cinderblocks and plywood, and you get a couple of 11 year olds building ramps that look like something out of a Rube Goldberg contest for the differently abled, and an 8 year old that the ER nurses know by name.
Another girl checking in here, and I STILL beat boys up if I need to.
I climbed trees, burned things, killed things, fed those things to other things, got dirty, and I actually have helped hang someone upside down from a tree. They were quite willing of course, until we left him there…
what? I was 11, and we went back and got him…eventually.
Yeah, we did that to the kid that lived across the street from me. We came back to see his shirt flopped over his head and a little puddle of tears in the dirt.
I love the three Stooges and I’m a woman. Last New Year’s Eve there was a Stooges Marathon and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I think it’s an urban myth that women don’t like the Stooges.
Done, they burn for the first couple and then you can’t stop moving.
At least they were smarter then my friends were we play in the house until we broke a window. Then we changed houses and discovered that we could shoot q-tips from pellet guns which were pretty accurate if you cut one end off, which didn’t break windows. That was a blast until I got shot at short range and the q-tip stuck in my arm (still have the scar). I was 16.
We did those in college whenever we went to restaurants as an offensive line.
I think a couple of other admitted this on a three stooges thread we had a while back but I’ve yet to see a girl laugh at one of their shorts, most of the time I get the eye-roll and walk-out.
