While driving home from work today someone had a couple of manniquins in their front yard selling them in their garage sale. It reminded me of a stunt a friend of mine and I pulled when we were 16 years old. My friend’s aunt had a small clothing store and gave him a mannequin that had a broken hand. It was made out of a hard plastic and had metal joints. It weighed about 40 pounds. One Friday night we were bored and thought it would be fun to hang the mannequin from a freeway overpass.
The high school we attended was located next to a freeway and had a pedestrian bridge to a junior high school on the other side of the freeway. We decided on that bridge because there would not be any traffic. We rounded up about 50 feet of rope to hang the mannequin. When we got to the bridge we had a problem. There was an 8 foot high cyclone fence on each side of the bridge and if we dropped the mannequin over the fence, the fall would decapitate it. We decided to tie one end of the rope in the middle of the bridge on a fence post and the other around the mannequin. I would then take the mannequin and drop it over the fence away from the middle so it would swing down thus avoiding the sudden drop.
We waited for traffic to clear a bit and I hoisted the mannequin to the top of the fence. I had to climb part way up the fence to do this. Just as I got the mannequin to the top, my friend hollered a car was coming and to get down. At that same time I stabbed myself in the wrist with the top of the fence. This caused me to drop the mannequin over the fence. The mannequin swung down missing the car by about 20 feet. We don’t even think the driver saw it, he never slowed down. What we didn’t see was the 18 wheeler coming the other direction on the freeway.
The mannequin swung across the other lanes, the truck was still about 100 feet away. But the truck was probably doing at least 70 mph and was at the right spot for the backswing. The mannequin hit right between the truck and trailer and exploded into a bunch of pieces. The rope, which we tied under the mannequins arms, caught on the truck a pull taught. At it tightest, it made a pinging noise just like someone plucked a guitar string. The fence post bent over 90 degrees pulling the fence with it. The truck driver slammed on his brakes just before the mannequin hit and he came to a smoky stop. The rope broke at a knot we had tied about 20 feet from the mannequin.
That is about all my friend and I stayed to watch. We ran to my car and got out of the area as fast as possible. The next morning I got the newspaper figuring there would be something about the mannequin. Nothing. Same with the next days paper. We went by the bridge Monday morning before school. The post had been straightened and some red ‘danger’ tape was tied to the fence. There was to thick black marks on the freeway from the truck stopping but there was no sign of the mannequin. Looking back on this incident, we could have killed somebody.
Tonight two friends and I took seven traffic cones. We took them from parking lots and off the side of the road (where they had no use).
This car pulled up beside us and the people in there started to gave us odd looks than burst out into laughter at the sight of three people and seven cones in one car.
At the next intersection, we pulled up next to a police car. They had pulled up slightly farther than we did, so they couldn’t see in the car, but it was still close. Me and one of my friends wanted to get more cones, but the one that drove us around didn’t after the police car incident.
This wasn’t so much a “stunt” as it was just a really idiotic thing to do. I was about 6, and had gotten myself grounded for eating the icing off my baby sister’s first birthday cake, and then trying to convince my mom that robbers had broken in and done it. (I was truly astonished that she didn’t believe me, by the way.) Because my bedroom was full of toys and books, I was banished to my mother’s bedroom for my time-out. Since I had nothing better to do, I started digging around in her closet and I unearthed a white patent leather purse. It seemed very plain to me, so I decorated it with ball point pen. My mom’s name is Joan, and my dad always called her Joanie. I personalized the purse with her name, only I was six, and I wrote “Jone. E. L___”
I was astonished again later when she didn’t believe me when I told her that it was HER name, so she herself must have done it.
When I was about six I tied a driftwood log to an empty oil drum with some bailing wire, and floated out with the tide into the Bay of Fundy. Foated back in six hours later.
It led to a lifetime love of paddling, so although it was a stupid thing, it was a good thing.
I once tried to recharge a battery, for my game when my mom was getting her haircut at a beauty salon. I thought it was possible to recharge it using an electrical outlet and a paper clip, I blew out the electricity on the whole street and never did get that battery working.
oK I don’t know if it qualifies, but here goes antyhow.
In HS i went to a vocational school, where I was training in Printing and all the varoius thing like, type setting and stripping.
Stripping consists of putting several photographic negitives in a layout to be burnt onto a plate for the press.
It was near the end of the year and we were cleaning out the tool shed where the negitives and varoius type sof paper for the presses were stored.We were throwing this in a rolling dumpster about 6x3x5. I’d climbed up on a stool near the dumpster to clean out a shelf when I looked down into the dumpster. I was then overcome with the urge to jump into the thing, so I did.
When big thumpy type noises are made in the same room as running printing presses you get attention very quickly. I stuck my head up out of the dumpster to see the faces of my classmates and instructers. After playing it off like I accidently fell into the dumpster I was assigned a different task. But, anyone paying a bit of attention to the grin on my face would have known otherwise.
Stunt? Id’a know, but it was damn fun!
When my dad was a kid, he and his sister and two of their friends threw a bunch of rocks across their street, to make a “bumpy road”.
My cousin and I once went around her neighborhood (and she lives in this HUGE PLAN), and pulled the flags up on every single mail box. My aunt caught us and told us it was a federal offense.
I was about 10, and my friend down the street had a very steep driveway. Unless you were familiar with the street, you wouldn’t know the driveway was even there because in addition to being a steep incline, the driveway was hidden by two big shrubs in the right of way. One day, we got the bright idea to get a few skateboards, lie on our stomachs and ride down the driveway face first. At the time, it was tons of fun, but how none of us managed to get squashed by an oncoming station wagon is beyond me.
This wasn’t a stunt, but it sure was stupid. At the end of 5th grade, I received a “D” in Reading. I was terrified of bringing the report card to my mom. She flipped out when I got a “C,” so God only knows what a D would bring about. I had heard, or thought I had heard, about a paper shortage. So, I threw my report card into the sewer near my home, and told my mom that we didn’t get report cards this year because of the paper shortage.
Needless to say, she didn’t believe me for even 1 second. In fact, I think she was almost as angry at the stupidity of the lie as she was about the lie itself.
A short phonecall to the school later and the truth was out. That was a lousy summer. She was angry about that for 3 freakin’ months.
Weirdly, 25 years later, she has no recollection of this happening.
When my dad was in high school he was in a Graphic arts thing and for st patty’s day the printed out business card sized things that said… Happy st patty’s day you Irish Mother F***er
And handed them out to everyone. In Philly were every other person is Irish , this could get a man killed
In high school, me and a bunch of friends thought it’d be a kick to have a contest to see who could dive into the shallowest water in the pool.
From the roof.
I can’t believe no one broke their neck.
Sounds familiar. When I was about 8 we had a hill nearby my house that was about probably about a quarter of a mile long and really steep. I had this little ratty bike with solid rubber tires that may parents had picked up at some garage sale. So I decided to go down the hill.
Wow did I pick up speed fast. About halfway down the bike (which was real ratty) started shaking so bad the pedals fell off leaving me no brake. I must have hit 40 mph by the bottom of the hill and I just blew through that intersection. And another before running into the thick wall of bushes and trees at the end of the subdivision. Luckily we were one of a handfull of people living there and there was little chance of getting hit but I still came back with skinned knees. The worst was having to push that damn bike back up that hill. Took forever.
This is my all time favorite stunt…one which I would like to do again, I might add.
The local mall is shaped like a big plus sign with a huge water fountain in the middle that could be seen from any place in the concourse. We were about 15 or so and bored senseless so I came up with the idea to dump some shampoo in the fountain to make some bubbles. We went to Rite Aid and dumped probably 36 ounces of the cheapest shampoo we could find into the fountain, came back 30 minutes later and noticed a thin ring of suds around the permiter of the fountain.
We put our heads together and decided that we needed something with a little more punch…MR. BUBBLE! We got a big ol’ bottle of Mr. Bubble bubble bath and dumped it in. We left for about an hour and when we came back and got our first glimpse of that snow scene…man that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Kids were playing in it, suds were flying all over the place and it smelled so good. The suds were a good 5 feet above the water retaining wall around the fountain. We walked up to it and tried so hard not to look guilty. There was a maintenence guy swimming around looking for the drain. That was the best day.
Not really a stunt, just a really dumb thing to do. One summer afternoon when I was 5 I asked my father where mother was and he responded that she’d gone to the pharmacy. So, I decided to walk to the pharmacy, about a mile and a half away, by myself, to find my mother.
I had never walked nearly that far by myself in my life, had no clue how to safely cross a street and had to cross four major league intersections each way. Realisitically, it probably took more than an hour to get to the pharmacy. I walked all the aisles but did not find my mother. When I left the store, it was getting dark outside, but I finally made it home.
I did not say a word about it to anyone and, oddly, no one said a word to me. Hard to believe a five year old could be gone for 2-3 hours and not missed. I was very lucky nothing happened on my walk and even luckier my parents never discovered it.
I put an old screw-in flashbulb (the kind press photographer’s used) in the lamp at camp. When they flipped on the light for “bed check”, the councellors were blinded by the flash.
What I learned later was that house current could have made the bulf explode.
I put an old screw-in flashbulb (the kind press photographer’s used) in the lamp at camp. When they flipped on the light for “bed check”, the councellors were blinded by the flash.
What I learned later was that house current could have made the bulf explode.
Collecting empty shotgun cartridges at a firing range while people were shooting at clay pigeons.
Sticking a hose up the exhaust pipe of our car.
Swinging a plumb line around on a string. (It came around and whacked me upside the head. Several stiches later I was fine, except I lost my ability to understand algebra, or maybe I just didn’t care.)
Pretending to ‘kill myself’ by jumping off a jungle gym. It was in second grade, and had something to do with a girl, as I recall.
Charlie had a crush on my roommate when we were 18—he just moved here from Alabama and had the sexiest accent. He bought us three of those huge bottles of Shlitz malt liquor and drove us way out in the country where he raced through the orange groves at 110.
Under 21 but over 18 and drinking…
110…
Strange guy…
Way way out in the country alone…
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
It was too fun and it took us months to say to each other “You know what? We were soooo lucky!”
