Stories of Innocent Mischief

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(Or It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time)

I spent my “formative” years on a small Micronesian island in the Pacific called Kwajalein. The children on the island were mostly ignorant of the business being conducted there and spent much of the time innocently investigating the surroundings. The truth is that we brats were probably as invasive a pestilence as the wharf rats that came on the cargo ships.

We generally got into everything that wasn’t locked up, and one of those things was the dumpster behind the activities building. This building, designed to prevent “island fever” in the less inventive or imaginative inhabitants, contained diversions as diverse as a library at one end and a bowling alley at the other. (Good planning there.)

It didn’t take long for us kids to discover that the cracked or chipped bowling pins were discarded in the dumpster at the alley end of the building. Soon we had collected enough pins to organize our own bowling alley in the road in front of our house. We only lacked a ball. Then we remembered the shiny black bowling ball in the zippered bag on the floor of my father’s closet. Set’em up!

After spending the afternoon sending my father’s ball bounding down the roughly paved road and chasing the scattered pins and runaway ball we tired of the experiment. He would be home from work soon and we had to return the ball to the closet. But a transformation had gone unnoticed by us scamps in our excitement. The shiny black ball now looked like a rottweiler’s favorite chew toy. The dusty ball was a mass of scratches, divots, and had a few good-sized chunks unaccounted for.

What to do? Well, there were five boys in my family, so it was often an ultimate strategy to ignore the damage and keep your mouth shut. So back into the bag the ball went. Zip. Zip.

About this time my father became an avid bridge player. I guess there’s only so much you can do with a deck of playing cards.

Did you, in your childhood innocence, ever unwittingly wreak havoc?

2

I was a right bastard when I was young. An innocent bastard of course. I never realized the consequences of the things I did.

Like, while systematically destroying every pane of glass in the greenhouses near my house It never occured to me that these greenhouses belonged to someone and that it would cost them a fortune to replace the glass.

Apparently I used to take apart all my brothers’ things (stereos, walkmans watches etc…). I say apparently because I never remember doing so. I must have been quite young. I do remember taking apart my own things though, and making damn sure I put them back together in one piece.

3

All the kids on our street were playing “Hide and Seek” one summer evening, I was about 8 or 9 years old I think. It had grown dark, and I had been hiding up in the neighbors tree, when a car came slowly down the street. I realized that it was a police car, yet I stayed in the tree, thinking “they can’t see me”
Then, the spotlight shined up in the tree, and the police car stopped. Two officers got out and headed over to where I was hiding.
Suddenly I JUMPED OUT OF THE TREE, and, in a very high pitched voice yelled

" HI !!! …I’M A TREEEEEE FAIRY!!..CROSS MY TREE FAIRY HEART"

The stunned officers stood there looking at me dancing around them, and then one of them said “You know that you aren’t supposed to be in someone elses tree without their permission, don’t you?”
I sang out as I skipped away “That’s O.K. 'cause I’m a TREEEE FAIRY!!”…
(this ended up being one of those embarrassing stories that my family just had to tell everyone about…including my first boyfriend)

4

The mischief was my sisters, not mine. I was the unwitting suspect. And it changed our lives…

7 years old. First Communion was a big deal in our family as my parents were active in the church (Dad was married to stepmom #1, who was a fearsome little social-climber). Anyway, on my special day, we kids were lined up and kept waiting in a very hot room. Getting thirstier and thirstier, I spied my older sister and, after getting her attention, asked her if she could get me some water.

“No, I can’t. You’re not supposed to drink before the mass or you’re going to Hell.”
“But I’m thirsty!!!”
“If you drink, you’re going to Hell,” she said smugly, “but I’ll tell you what I did. When you drink from the chalice, just take a big gulp. It’s grape juice and there won’t be many kids after you, so it’s not like nobody else is going to have any.”
“Thanks!”

So, after an interminable wait we finally start. And I’ve gotta tell you, I am THIRSTY!!! So I wait while all the kids are called, getting thirstier and thirstier the whole time. Finally, the priest intones my name:

“JohnT, yadda, yadda, yadda. Drink from this cup…”

Whereupon I literally yanked it from his hands, tilted it up pretty high, and took 3 or 4 big, HUGE gulps… of wine.

Guess who is extremely allergic to alcohol, to the point where my stomach immediately and violently rejects it? Guess who found out during his First Communion?

My eyes got huge, my face turned red. I remember turning towards the audience looking for my traitorous sister, when I then turned my head back towards the priest, dropped the chalice, and Linda Blaired all over the front of the priest. Wine, breakfast, remains of the previous nights snack, all came out and splattered the priest, the altar, and the chalice.

He jumped back in shock, the kids erupted in laughter, the audience… well, I don’t remember what the audience reaction was because I was consumed by the fact that I had, for the first time in my short life, really, truly, fucked up. And big.

I acted sick, which was pretty simple because I was sick. But still, one just doesn’t do such things… not in my family, you don’t, and I suspect, not in most families.

My parents resigned from their church duties that week, found another church, and eventually got divorced about 3 years later. I don’t think that my first communion was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but I do think that it was when things started to go wrong between them. Which was alright by me, as I couldn’t stand her.

5

When I was four or so, I used to hide under the clothes in department stores and jump out at people, yelling “Raar! I’m a dinosaur!”

I put rocks in a mulch spreader once, and pennies in lightbulb sockets (boy, were my parents pissed). Beat up a stained glass window, ripped the wallpaper off the walls in my room.

Probably a bunch of other stuff that I haven’t heard about.

6

When I was around the age of 8-12, my cousin and I would visit our dads every summer in Memphis. He lived in Mississippi and I lived in the north 'burbs of Chicago, and our dads, who were brothers, shared a house.

One night (after 2:00 am) we snuck out with a Daisy 880 pellet gun and then snuck under the interstate overpass, climbing barbed fences and daring traffic to reach the center island.

We had only just gotten there, and as yet had no success in our mission of shooting a pidgeon, mostly due to the darkness which had forgotten to account for, when police car stopped, scooped us up, and delivered us to my stepmother, who made it very clear to the officer that we were not “her kids”. In the chaos, I had propped the BB gun up against the concrete support, and the cop never noticed it.

Three hours later, my dad woke us both up yelling, “They found the BB gun! You two better go back and get!”. We immediately raced back under the bridge and picked up the BB gun, shot a pidgeon, and carried them both home. It was years later before we realized the logic error that the police certainly never found it, because it wouldn’t still be there for us to dangerously cross the interstate again to retrieve it.

7

:smack: pigeon, that is

8

When I was about 5 yrs old, I really wanted a swimming pool. We lived in a 2 bedroom rental house in North Carolina at the time time with a smallish, but decent front yard. My younger sister and I managed to dig up most of the front yard in about an afternoon and tried to fill it with water from the hose. We succeeded in only making an immense mud pit. I still remember the disappointment in not having a little lake filled with clear water. And it kept SINKING INTO THE GROUND! For some reason, I can’t remember my mom’s reaction.

9

I don’t have anything of relevance to add to this thread, but I just wanted to tell Ex that I’m jealous of you! I have a strange fascination with South Pacific islands and Micronesia in general. Always been a place that I would love to visit.

10

How old do you have to be for it to be considered innocent mischeif? My freshman year in college I lived with these two other guys and we were always pulling stuff on each other. One time they poured all the water out of my water bottle and replaced it with gin. I discovered this while I was sitting in quantative analysis. But I digress…One time me and one of my roommates were going to pull this great prank on our other roommate. We built this elaborate slingshot-like apparatus out of some scrap wood, a few bungee cords and three bras, making it therefore able to hold six waterballoons at once. We took it up on the roof of the house and hid on the other side where he couldnt see us, and the plan was to wait until he was leaving for work, and we would launch the balloons over the top of the roof and pelt him with them as he was getting in his car. We figured with six balloons, one of them had to hit him. Looking back on it, we should have tested it first. We never imagined that the balloons could possibly go so far and with so much force. They went all the way across the street and broke two of the neighbors windows. Well, this guy was in his house at the time, and totally freaked out. He ran across the street and kicked the ladder down, as apparently he had called the police. Our roommate is standing in the driveway looking up at us on the roof of the house looking completely confused. Well, so we were still stuck on the roof when the cops got there. They actually arrested us and charged us with misdemeanor vandalism. We got the windows fixed and the charges were dropped. I guess its a good story now, but at the time it was pretty traumatic. Its amazing how tragically awry a simple joke can go.

11

I was the magical (and oblivious) age of six. The idea of consequence was barely formed in my head and even though I was mostly a very good child, I had myself a day where I wasn’t so good. Just off the school bus, I was standing with the group of kids I usually walked home with, and we were all waiting for the right time to cross the busy street. There was a area marked for crossing but the cars went f-a-s-t so we’d normally end up waiting from five to ten minutes before the street was relatively safe.

On that particular day, I noticed some fairly large rocks at my feet along side this busy road. I don’t remember actively thinking it’d be a good idea to toss one out into the street persay but… I picked one up and chucked it out into the street. Well, it went up into the air as my aim sucked and landed in front of an oncoming car, going slower than the other cars because the driver had just turned onto the street. The people in said car noticed. They slammed on their brakes and began screaming angrily at the kid in front of me. They were so angry, I thought they were going to open the car door and grab the startled boy, possibly drive off with him never to be seen again (such was my imagination). I was scared, the boy in front of me was scared, the whole group was scared. No one in the group of kids had seen me throw the rock and didn’t know exactly what was going on. The driver flipped the boy off (which really scared me, being such a “bad” grown-up thing to do) and rushed off still yelling.

No one said a word as we crossed the road and we hurried our lil’ patookas extra quickly across, too! I was in shock and scared the driver would come back again to yell at the poor little “in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time” boy, and even more afraid that they’d come back and KNOW somehow that I had thrown the rock instead. I never told anyone what I’d done, no way in H-E-double hockey sticks!! That would have earned me a spanking for sure…

I felt badly, let me assure you. I never, EVER threw another rock at a car again. If you, dear reader, are reading my post, thinking “hey… I remember getting yelled at one day after school for chucking a rock into the street while I stood waiting for the street to clear so I could cross it” and you were confused and frightened by the people yelling at you… well, I’m very, very sorry you got blamed. I really am.

12

I don’t know if this counts as mischief or not, but when I was a young 'un both parents had identical white Mercedes station wagons. My mother parked hers in front of a shop one day (a bakery, I think) on an incline running down towards the storefront… it was a manual, and she’d left it out of gear, and the detent button on the handbrake was so shiny-looking, so three-ish-year-old dutchboy208 reached forward and pressed it.

It didn’t move! It wasn’t a button! It was a dirty trick!

Then I pulled the lever upward, because I loved that cool ratchet noise… and my thumb was still on the button… then the button depressed itself, and the handle dropped, and the car started rolling…

I closed my eyes and hid in the footwell, but I can still remember the crash and my mother yelling “Oh *******!” (the pet name nobody will EVER be told of, not an expletive) and the nice lady in the shop coming out to tell me it was okay because Mummy was paying for the window…

13

Given that the Chunnel itself was (at the time it was completed) the most expensive construction project in human history, at $21 billion, I’d say a transatlantic tunnel is economically impossible.

The Chunnel is about 31 miles long; the distance from Newfoundland to the western coast of Ireland is a little under 1,900.
Newfoundland and Ireland probably aren’t practical as endpoints, either.
Reykjavik and Newfoundland (St. John’s, specifically) are a little closer at 1657 miles. Still not exactly perfect endpoints, but closer.
Let’s try, say, New York City and London: 3470 miles.

Given that it took about 3 years to dig the Channel Tunnel, without the geological problems that beset the Seikan Tunnel, we reach a figure of about 10 miles per year, working from either end. So, NYC to London will only take (at an optimistic estimate) about 300 years.

The real problem, IMHO, would be the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Drilling horizontally at that depth across a major fault line would be somewhat hazardous, I believe.
Hopefully a geologist or engineer will be along to answer that one.

14

Uh… whoops. Meant to post that last bit in another thread (in GQ).

15

Some friends and I were in the backyard, fooling around, not really playing together, just doing our own thing. I started throwing small rocks behind me, at the house, and acting like it wasn’t me, really freaking out the others, who couldn’t tell what was going on; they only knew that something kept hitting the house. As my back was toward the house, they never noticed me blindly throwing rocks over my shoulder. (Really, they were only about as big as a quarter.)

One rock too many, and I broke the sliding glass door. It shattered, but thankfully held.

This was about 20 years ago. My parents still don’t know it was me.

16

When we were kids, my brother and I and one or two other friends (I’m hazy on the details; it’s been a long time) were playing in the storeroom next to my grandparents’ basement. We found a lovely square of fresh, smooth concrete just sitting there in its form. Yay! A table for our Star Wars figures!

Somehow, at some point (remember, I said it was hazy), we went from simply putting the figures on this marvelously convenient tabletop to chipping little pieces out of its smooth surface. And in short order, we had set the action figures aside and had proceeded to hacking at the concrete with whatever implements we could find: screwdrivers, chisels, hammers, whatever.

Cue my grandfather’s voice: “What are you DOING?” And we freeze, all sitting around the now-destroyed square of concrete.

Turns out they’d been planning to replace their chimney cap, as the one they had on at the time was old and worn, and this was the new one. And we’d smashed the ever-loving crap out of it, just for kicks. Heh.

17

It was the summer of 1978. I was six years old, not quite seven. My sister, who is two years younger than I am, looked up to me as though I were the wisest person in the world. After all, I had just completed kindergarten! The poor little girl trusted my judgment completely. Big mistake. Anyway, it was a beautiful summer day, not a cloud in the sky, and our father was taking advantage of the calm day (southwest Kansas is usually quite windy) by painting the garage and all of the surrounding buildings on our farm. He’d been painting most of the day, and needed to take a break. Before he went inside, he warned the two of us to stay away from the ladder propped against the pump-house. We promised to stay away from it. Well, it only took about five minutes before we were playing beneath the ladder. This progressed to both of us taking turns climbing up a few rungs and then jumping off. Suddenly, I had the best idea ever! I went inside the garage and grabbed one of my mom’s umbrellas. We had watched Pinocchio for the first time a couple of days before. Somehow, I managed to talk my sister into climbing on top of the pump-house with the umbrella. I will never forget the look on her face as she sat on the roof, her legs dangling over the eave, clutching the umbrella, and asking me, “Are you sure, Sissy?”. Using the logic only a six-year-old can possess, I remember looking up at her and telling her to make sure the umbrella was opened all the way. The next thing I remember, Little Sis is laying in a crumpled heap on the ground, moaning. I hovered over her, telling her to shush. Her moans turned to screams, and it didn’t take long for Mom and Dad to investigate. Poor girl, her arm was broken. She was so mad at me, it took her about two weeks before she would let me sign her cast. I’m sure my parents were pretty upset, but I don’t really remember their reactions, nor the punishment I surely received. I can’t imagine this incident has anything to do with my sister’s fear of heights. :eek: