While driving yesterday I suddenly remembered the days of my youth, decades ago, when a widespread amusement for children was to throw rocks at cars and trains. The adults didn’t like it, but only one in a great number would try to chase you down, and when they did, that was part of the fun. Talk about effing obnoxious, and yet I did it, too.
Then it occurred to me that I haven’t seen kids throwing rocks at cars in many, many years. Which led me to remember other obsolete (?) obnoxious kids’ games/pranks, like “thunder and lightning,” in which you’d knock on someone’s door and then run away. Then there is the legendary “flaming bag of poop” trick, something everyone talked about but no one I personally knew ever tried. Do these “games” continue to entertain and inspire the kids of today, or have they all gone the way of the stick and hoop? Has anyone had a precious little angel lob a rock at their car recently?
I recall seeing several news stories in the past couple of years about rocks being dropped from overpasses onto vehicles. Google brought up some nasty stories when I searched on “overpass rock car driver”.
When I was a kid, we liked to roll horse apples (those knobby green things) into the busy street in front of our house, hoping that they would be run over by an approaching vehicle. Once I became a driver, I realized how stupid and dangerous that was, but as a kid I had no idea, so I tend to cut kids a lot of slack even when they do incredibly stupid things. If the kids continues to do the stupid things after it’s been explained to them and they’ve been told not to do it, I’m not so lenient.
I never did anything as dangerous as that as a kid. But I have had stones thrown at my car by kids a couple of years ago. Broke a headlamp. I have also seen kids lurking with intent on a footbridge over the A5 which is essentially a motorway with cars driving by at 80-90 mph. I think running the risk of actually killing someone goes a bit beyond obnoxious.
My brother was sitting next to a guy on a tube train who got hit by a half-brick (IIRC) thown through the window (some tube lines run above ground). The guy was very badly hurt and could have been killed.
Another “fun” game they play around here is a version of chicken where they hang around at the side of the road and then dash across in front of you at the last second. Whose fault would it be if you ran down one of the little bastards?
Then there’s the riding of motorbikes(often stolen) on the bike-paths by underage kids. I’ve not seen that for a while probably not coincidently since a 12 year old ran into a lampost (I think, something solid anyway not a pedestrian) and killed himself. It was at least his bike, birthday present from dad :rolleyes:
We had an unintentional version of this on the street where I grew up. The street was lower than all of the houses on it, so all of the driveways were long and steep. We would take our bikes to the top of the driveways and haul ass down the driveway, across the street and up the opposite side. More than once, our timing was off and we ended up zipping out in front of a car. With all of that speed, there was no way we would be able to stop and the poor driver got very little warning that we were coming. I’m surprised I survived my childhood with no major injuries. :smack:
I had much fun as a pre-teen throwing rocks at passing trains. But I only threw them at freight cars, never the Amtrak passenger cars (mainly out of a fear of getting caught, I think.)
[QUOTE=Small Clanger]
I never did anything as dangerous as that as a kid. But I have had stones thrown at my car by kids a couple of years ago. Broke a headlamp. I have also seen kids lurking with intent on a footbridge over the A5 which is essentially a motorway with cars driving by at 80-90 mph. I think running the risk of actually killing someone goes a bit beyond obnoxious.
In my case, we threw pebbles at cars on residential streets, often in full view of the motorists, with no chance of hurting the drivers. It was still a bad idea, but we were oblivious.
Hmmm, I wonder if kids today are actually better behaved in some ways?
In my case, we threw pebbles at cars on residential streets, often in full view of the motorists, with no chance of hurting the drivers. It was still a bad idea, but we were oblivious.
Hmmm, I wonder if kids today are actually better behaved in some ways?
Not a chance. The stone throwers who broke my headlamp were throwing at on-coming traffic and for the most part you can drive pretty quickly round here 50-60 mph is common. The stone that broke my headlamp would probably have busted the windscreen.
The section of road where they play chicken is dual carriageway, legal speed limit 70 mph, a boy racer might be doing 90. The form is to run across the road assuming the driver will slow down enough not to run you down. I’ve not read about any of these idiots being killed. Yet.
The reporting in the local paper of the motorbike kid who killed himself seemed (to me) way too sympathetic. He was riding a motorbike (illeagally for many reasons) on a pedestrian/cycle path without a helmet. I can’t remember the exact details but he might even have had a passenger at the time.
The closet we use to come was throwing snowballs at passing buses. The looks you’d see on passengers faces were priceless. Funny thing is, I only lived a block from an expresssway at the time, it never came up in my group of friends throw rocks at passing cars though.
I’m not sure that kids are magically better than we were, as a whole, but they certainly have more to occupy their free time inside than we did, no?
Throwing rocks at cars was sorta low on the priority list of Fun Things To Do Outside, at least in my childhood, since many modern parents are afraid to let their kids roam unsupervised the kids never get to reach that level of boredom.
Kids still do that. I can remember playing outside in the summer and running around minding my own business, then being screamed at and threatened with the police by someone who lived in the complex. Some other kids had rang her doorbell and run off, but I was the one who was visible because I wasn’t playing with them. They called it ‘Niki niki nine doors’ though.
And snowballs have been known to hit the buses in the wintertime here. I even saw a driver get out and chase after the little darling who threw it (it hit pretty hard, I think there was an ice chunk in it)
Some of the favourite pastimes now it seems are shrieking in the roadway (I thought the girl was being kidnapped initially. She wasn’t.), stealing other kids tricycles, running a stick along the fence blocking off the lower parkade (which echoes LOUDLY because the parkade is concrete), running in circles in and out of the library (go inside, run around the desk and back out the out door). And that’s just this past couple weeks.
It comes with being in a family oriented neighborhood, but I am thankful my baby will sleep through darn near anything and if anyone starts ringing my doorbell I’ll be keeping an eye out for them.
Another thing we used to do was stand next to the busy road outside our house and point a light meter at cars. (A light meter is a little boxy thing about the size of a pack of cigarettes that people used to measure the light before taking photos.) Pointing the light meter at cars seemed to upset drivers more than the throwing of horse apples. Someone actually pulled over once and asked us what the hell we were doing. We ran away.
I don’t think that kids today are magically better. I’m friends with most of the neighborhood kids, and they occasionally are in my house. I have to lock my house when I’m gone for the sole purpose of keeping the kids from entering while I’m gone (it happened several times, and the parents blamed me!). It was a real battle the first year I was here to stop them from climbing over my fence to get into my yard. The problem is that my house and yard are not safe for unsupervised kids. The kids do stupid dangerous things even when supervised, despite repeated warnings.
A couple of weeks ago there was trouble when some kids threw rocks and broke out the back windows of an unoccupied house. Although all the known wrong-doers were reported to their parents, the incident is being blamed on one kid who seems to be ringleader for getting the other kids to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.
Oh, they’re hurling rocks at the Metra commuter train cars on Chicago’s west side. Probably twice a week on the way home I hear a “thud” and sometimes see the kids. They don’t seem to be real concerned with getting caught.
I never threw rocks at cars, but I did put rocks in the middle of the road and laugh as cars drove around them. Why I thought that was funny, I have no idea.
As for current pranks, I did find some kids that were highly amused when they darted in front of my car and got out of the way at the last minute. Did I mention it was night with no street lights and on a heavy-traffic road? Scared me to death. They thought it was hilarious.
My brother, stepbrother, stepsister and I used to play these sorts of games. We did the ring-doorbell-run-away thing; also, the walking-very-slowly-out-of-the-path-of-a-moving-car-game. We put pennies on railroad tracks. We busted bottles in the middle of the road. (One day a very angry man got out of his car and made the boys pick up all the glass; we girls were fast enough to escape into the woods.) We did some worse things too. These days when kids cut through my yard and I start to get pissed, I thank my lucky stars I never got my young ass kicked for all the rotten things I did.
Hey, I just figured out where all this shitty karma’s coming from!