Not me, but my younger brother. He was friends with a kid who lived on a farm several miles out of town. They decided that they needed a tunnel connecting them. I don’t know if Jim actually started digging out at the farm, but my brother spent the better part of a day working on it. We older siblings were aghast that mom let him do it. Her entirely sensible take was that he wasn’t hurting anything and he wasn’t bothering any of us.
He did not fill the hole back in, and years later there was still a bit of a depression where he’d been working. He was probably 6 or 7 at the time, so hadn’t made much progress.
That’s only the sound made by giant amoebas, that grow to over a meter in size. The smaller ones are much quieter.
I think a lot of kids did that. Except that I knew that China, like Cleveland, was in the Northern Hemisphere, and hence couldn’t be on the opposite side of the Earth from me. So I was instead digging a hole to Australia. Still not right, but closer, at least.
I don’t think that was enirely sensible, but it worked that time, so OK. Still it seems noteworthy to me that collapsing self dug holes kill many children, specially when dug on sand. Here is an example, it is an all too common accident and tragically preventable.
Along the lines of @Tibby’s adventure, my incident was innocent (because I wasn’t fully aware of the risk), but potentially catastrophic.
My parents were involved in amateur theater, and my father obtained some flash paper (nitrocellulose) for an effect a show called for. When ignited, it emits a bright flash (duh!) and then quickly goes out with no remaining ash or residue.
I was fascinated by it, and somehow imagined that any similar tissue paper might behave in the same way. So I tried setting fire to tissue in my room. I don’t recall doing any damage, exactly how my parents reacted, or if/how I was punished, but my sister remembers what she calls my “trying to burn the house down.”
I also remember, back when you could still get “strike anywhere” wooden kitchen matches, striking them and in the same motion tossing them so they looked like little fireworks. But I didn’t do that inside. The only occasion I recall doing it was on a bridge over a small stream. I was a bit of a firebug as a kid.
When I was 4 or five years old I was best friends with a girl down the street. We played lots of “Let’s pretend” games with each other. One that we played repeatedly was “Fairy and Plumber” it was basically playing house where she was a fairy and I was a plumber. Her choosing the role of a fairy makes sense what with the magic powers and all, but I have absolutely no explanation as to why I out of all the possible alter egos I decided that a plumber was the thing to be.
IIRC a comment by Isaac Asimov, the antipodes of the continental US are in the Indian Ocean and the only actual land would be two small islands totaling about seven square miles so any kid who succeeded in digging a hole that far and accurately would likely drown.
I and my brother never tried that but our family owned land near Prescott, AZ that was part of an old mining claim. On the road that led to the lot there was a big dent into the hillside that we’d been told was an adit that had been blown closed when everything was a abandoned when the mines played out. We got about two feet before the earth ran out and we ran into very large rocks. Mean ol’ dad refused to buy us a pick so that was that.
The drowning kid would be tragic, but it would be pretty spectacular when all that seawater drains down the hole, reaches the Earth’s core and flashes into steam.