Monumentally stupid things you did in your youth (AKA I'm Lucky To Be Alive)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Monumentally stupid things I did? More than I care to remember. Off the top of my head, in chronological order:

When I was about 5 I climbed on top of a 5 story building with a friend. (Someone had forgotten to lock the access to the roof). So there we were, playing near the edge. The “games” were things like pushing the other towards the edge or walking on the parapet. Or at least trying to - we didn’t do much walking, but we did stand on it. My friend’s mother eventually saw us (she nearly had a heart attack) and sent someone to retrieve us. The event caused quite a commotion in the building and in our families, and I clearly recall us (my friend and I) wondering what the big deal was…

When I was about ten I was out in the field playing with a few classmates. One of them had a bayonet. He was swinging the 12 inch blade like a machete, “beheading” some plants. The bayonet slipped out of his hand and flew past my head. It actually brushed my ear. It could have blinded me in one eye at the very least. A huge knife flying straight towards your face is a very unusual sight and it’s not easily forgotten.

My friend’s parents (the one I’ve climbed on the rooftop with) have a sort of “summer retreat”. A little house in an area full of vegetation on the outskirts of the city - an ideal spot for partying. Which we did quite a bit in our late teens. At one point, we decided to cook something - not outside on the barbecue, but on the stove. Problem was, the stove was very old, as was the hose linking it to the propane tank. The hose was actually leaking, and at one point I noticed a couple of flames coming out of it and “climbing” towards the tank. Without thinking, we pulled the hose out, only to find ourselves in front of a 200 liter propane cylinder with a nice big flame coming out of its tap. (There was also a brief outburst of flames when the gas leaked from the hose burned in the air as I pulled the hose out of the tank). We stood there and stared at it sheepishly for a few seconds (we were also intoxicated) but eventually I came to and closed the tap. Luckily that was the end of it, but I would not care finding out what kind of damage a full 200 liter propane tank can do when exploding.

When I was in college I was returning home early in the morning from a party. I was very, very drunk. Last thing I remembered from that particular party was that some friends of mine were complaining about being unable to go home because they didn’t have a car and because the busses had stopped running for the day. Upon arriving home I found a good friend of mine sleeping in my room. He was also drunk. As he was in the neighborhood he decided to come in and sleep it off (he had the key to my apartment). I tried to wake him up in order to get him to go back to the party and drive home the other friends. I couldn’t, so I decided I’d do it myself.
Now, not only was I very drunk at the time, I also did not really know how to drive. I had a vague idea about how it’s done, but no experience and no driver’s license. Not that it was going to stop me… I took the car keys and took off to the party. On the way I [literally] ran into some roadwork and I’ll say in my defense that they had not marked the area properly (I believe it was a ditch, but I’m not sure). At any rate, I was speeding along when I noticed it at the very last moment. I swerved to avoid it, but I did hit a large temporary road sign. The thing hit the hood, bounced off and hit the middle of the windshield, bounced off again and hit the trunk, ending up badly deformed in the middle of the road. So there I was, blind drunk, at 3 AM, driving around (very badly) in a (technically) stolen car with a smashed windshield – so smashed I had to look out the side window in order to see something. Eventually I got back home safely, but I count myself lucky for not being hurt or - even worse – hurting someone.

62

As a kid I used to ride the large motorized gate at my sisters apartment complex, and make sure to jump off before your foot got jammed in. Once I had to yank my foot out from getting crushed, it had already happened bad enough to cause lain and swelling and bruising. I mean thinking about it now I realize I came VERY close to a very bad accident and possible handicapping, I didn’t think twice about it as a kid.:eek:

63

12ish - 8-man toboggan at the golf course at Fort Ridgely. Everything went right, and we (brothers, sister and Mom) set a distance record, and crossed a road at the bottom of the hill. As we coasted into the brush on the far side, a car drove right behind us. The next time we went, they had closed the road.

Just out of high school. Heavy drinking at a friends house out in the country (I think we were 19 and legal). General agreement that we were all too drunk to drive home, so we’d spend the night. This was the late 70’s when drunk driving wasn’t a huge deal, so we were pretty wasted. We were not too drunk to drive 15 miles to the nearby town to pick up a pizza, however.

64

Not me, but my childhood BF.

In the 70’s he and I were crazy about the show “Hawaii 5-0”. We were really fascinated by the opening scenes of the landing gear of the plane as it touched down (does anyone remember this?). He was fascinated by any sort of action shot and was constantly using his dad’s super-8 movie camera to get them. He made lots of short films of chase scenes while tied to the back of a car, shooting thru the window (dubbed in the dialogue later).

The height of his craziness was when he convinced me to tie him to the landing gear beneath my dad’s Cessna and let him film several takeoffs and landings, like those scenes at the beginning of the 5-0 show. Miraculously he wasn’t hurt.

He also invented the sport of duck-hunting from an airplane. But the less said about that the better.

65

So many stupid things, so little time. This one makes me shudder in horror: Because I was immortal when I was 17, I once, on a dare, jumped from a bridge into the shallow, stony Rappahannock River. In the dark.

66

When I was in my early teens (or late pre-teens - but I think the former) I got it into my head to see if it was possible to swallow an entire hard-boiled egg whole. (We only used the extra-large size.)

I gave it a shot but - like Tiny Tim’s bathtub - it wouldn’t go down my throat. I imagine had the egg been a bit smaller or my throat a bit wider I would have choked.

67

In junior high on a class trip to Six Flags me and my friends had the bright idea to swing back and forth on the air car. It stopped and reversed, bringing us back for a severe scolding and the news that the wire had almost come off the track.

68

I first told the tale of my friend, the steel cable, and the Long Island Railroad in this thread: My Railroad "Disaster" - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board

While it probably would not have killed me, my friend could have been fried.

69

When I was 13 or so, some friends and I got a hold of some professional grade fire works. Not small mortars and stuff like that, but big ass mortars (7 inch wide tubes!!) that exploded like tank shells from my friends older brother who was working a fireworks show at an amusement park, and some roman candles and firecrackers from wisconsin (I live in minnesota where these are all illegal). We also got some tannerite and gas and my older brother got permission to take my dads AR15 SPR out with us (a civilian sniper version of an m16). First, we had a roman candle fight in my neighborhood which is full of upper class old people, and normal upper class people like us. Of course, the old people called the cops after we launched a mortar and set off a few car alarms. We got a strict warning, but didn’t take it seriously. We then proceeded to launch a few mortars over our local lake, and then went to another town where shooting a gun is legal, and made a huge explosion with 2 lbs of tannerite and 4 gallons of gas that nearly killed my brother (he was kind of close shooting the ar). After we got scared, we lit the rest of the mortars with a fuse, but in the haste of running away from the fuse, somebody knocked one over. The explosion was fucking huge, and we thought someone died. We were so scared that we quickly drove off in our cars, and left, after the mortars were going haywire and launching and exploding everywhere. It looked like a scene from the hurt locker. The worst injury was my friends second degree burns. None of our parents found out, and we still do this type of shit today.

70

Got drunk at age 16, got bucked off of a horse. Landed on my ass on a cactus instead of on my head on a rock.

71

When I was 18, a guy I had an enormous crush on broke up with me in the middle of a frat party. So I went off with a few of his friends and got totally, barely-able-to-function, stoned.

Then I walked across the Harvard Bridge by myself at midnight to catch the last bus back home. I was very sad and completely disoriented. In fact, I fainted on someone’s lap during the trip back to campus. Then I was so confused that got off at the wrong stop and wandered around trying to find my dorm, which fortunately I eventually did.

The very next night, a classmate walked alone on that same bridge, at about 11 pm. She was grabbed and raped.

I usually think of myself as a pretty tough cookie, but given the poor shape I was already in, getting raped would have probably destroyed me mentally. I’m very lucky the same rapist wasn’t around to nab me that night.