Anyone else play tackle football in the street? We did when we were 10-13 years old and I’m not sure why as I grew up in a nice suburban neighborhood with plenty of soft grassy front yards. Luckily no one ever broke anything. One of my friends did have to go to the hospital for a nasty concussion though and some of the not so good quarterbacks broke some care windows. Man you guys have done some dumb things just like me. This is great. Keep the stories coming and I’ll try to think of some other good ones from ym own life.
I never came close to death, but I can’t really say what I did didn’t have potentially fatal consequences. I used to like to melt and/or burn things on the gas stove. I still have a scar on my thumb from melting sugar on a spoon. I also melted the plastic cap to something and ruined a burner.
Let’s see…stupid things as a kid…can’t really think of anything.
Of course, there was the time we found some dynamite (in gel form) and tried to detonate it by lighting it on fire and throwing it against a tree, or the episode when we went hunting and got about 200 yards apart from each other and started firing our shotguns at each other just because. The one that worries me the most is when the city would spray for mosquitos using a truck discharging who-knows-what, we would all run through the fog inhaling the funny smelling smoke. Other than that, I was a pretty normal kid…until high school.
I got a few.
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Hitching rides through town on our skateboards by holding onto the bumper of an unsuspecting car. Sometimes the driver would notice and would attempt to shake us off by speeding up/slowing down and/or swerving the car back and forth. We thought that was hilarious and would hold on even longer.
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My friends and I detonated a 6-inch steel pipe that was packed full of black powder and had a fuse made out of coiled toilet paper. We took it out to some orange groves outside of town and while most of us crouched down in an irrigation canal, my friend Mike lit the fuse. According the “bomb-maker” the fuse was supposed to go about 10 seconds or so. That was incorrect by about a factor of 10. I have no idea how Mike wasn’t blown in half. We could hear the bits and pieces whizzing by above our heads. Of course, we all had a good laugh about it.
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And, finally, we used to regularly have pellet gun wars down along the river in my hometown. The rules were two-pumps only and no head shots. I’ve still got a couple of scars from the time I forgot my jacket.
Ah, street football. Seriously, how did we not realize there were parks for this kind of thing?
My friend had a sand volleyball court in his rather expansive backyard. This might not seem too odd, but this was Colorado so a sand volleyball court did have a limited time of usage. But I digress. We were playing around, when one of hit the volleyball over the neighbor’s fence. So, one of us had to hop over and get the ball.
Did I mention this was sort of a farming community, so it was likely that a house was next to a farm with livestock?
Did I mention that the neighboring fence was about 5 feet high and was of the electric variety?
Being the best leaper, it is decided that I am the one to get the volleyball. Not a problem says I, especially since I am pretty sure that the bull the volleyball is now 20 feet away from probably can’t run very fast and certainly won’t pay any attention to me.
This was, in hindsight, a patently stupid thought.
I get a decent running start, sort of side hurdle the fence by using a post to push off of with my hand. I land awkwardly, but all seems fine. Except of course, the bull seems to have immediately notice that I have invaded his fortress of bullitude. He is not happy and starts walking my way, probably not to discuss economic theory. I continue facing him, but walk backwards because at this point I am nowhere near close enough to get back over the fence without electrocuting myself so I decide to back away until I can get enough of a running start.
In my backing away, I end up in the following position. Fence, 30 feet away stands Mullinator now next to the volleyball. 30 feet away from me as the third point of the triangle is the bull.
I pick up the volleyball. After all, my life doesn’t matter. Only the ball retrieval does. I decide a good diversionary tactic is to throw the volleyball over the bull to distract it. While a fine idea in theory, this only seems to anger the bull. As soon as I throw, he charges. As soon as he charges, I run for the fence. In my panic I have aimed myself directly at a part of the electric fence with no posts. Just sweet charged wires. With the bull closing in I fling myself over the wires as if I were adrunken high jumper, landing dextrously on my shoulder.
The bull stops, as it is the only creature around that realized the folly of nearing the electric fence.
Well, when we were kids in New York, we knew some Chinese guys who had access to any (and I mean ANY) kind of fireworks imaginable. Now, when we were between the ages of 12-14 or so, we were WAAAY to cool (or so we imagined) to bother with sissy stuff like sparklers or bottle rockets. We wanted the heavy duty stuff- and we got it, in huge quantities.
On July 4th, we’d have dozens of M-80s, and we came up with all kinds of insane ways to set them off. One guy would suggeststicking one in the hole of an anthill, “Brilliant idea,” we’d all say, and we’d detonate anthills until that got old.
“I know,” one guy would say, “Set one off in my sneaker… while I’m wearing it.” Wow, what a GREAT idea! And, believe it or not, the guy is an adult today, with two feet and ten toes!
My own closest call? I lit an M-80 in the schoolyard, and attempted to throw it as far as I could. But I made a characteristically lousy throw (there’s a reason I always played first base!), and the M-80 rolled under a car. We were all convinced (having seen numerous “Mannix” episodes) that the car would surely explode into flames, killing us all.
Luckily, the car survived… though its rear fender did not.
In retrospect, I’m rather astonished any of us are still alive. It was inbcredibly dangerous and incredibly stupid… but man, it seemed so cool at the time!
Two words: Lawn Darts.
My brother and I used to get 4 Jarts™ (the real kind with the pointy rusty metal tips), throw them up in the air, and run like hell.
Good times…good times…
When I was four years old we had just moved to a new farm and one of the first thing my dad did was hire some guys to reshingle the barn.
I was fasinated by these guys and one day when no one was watching me I scrambled to the very top of the barn and was keeping these guys company(around 50 feet high)…THEY thought it was funny. Their foreman did not…he went to the house and got my mom.
I still remember as though it were yesterday her calling to me…“Mark you want some ice cream?”(she didn’t want me to get scared and fall). I came down fast but can you believe it…I didn’t get ice cream…I got as might suspect a spanking to end all spankings.
A second one while I think of it(I was an idiot as a child)
When I was five I rode my tricycle to a neighbors house where a friend lived about a mile away(No one saw me the entire way).
We were going to catch tadpoles in this tiny stream about another 1/4 mile away on a deadend road(No one saw either of us go)…man we had fun that day…I caught a million tadpoles in a wonder bread plastic sack.
However later that afternoon after being gone ALL day I arrived home to the kind of panic you normally only see on tv when some kid falls down a well. My parents had called EVERYONE within miles…police…the works.
My mom and dad were sooooooo happy to see me safe…for about one microsecond…then the fireworks began.
Need I add I got another spanking?
Oh lord,astorian that reminds me of similar incidents while I was in HS just after I got my driver’s license. My sister and I thought it would be HILARIOUS to drive around in my new old car (an 88 Honda Civic,light blue) and throw lit fireworks at people.Not anything that would do any real damage,just stuff to scare the poop out of them.One day we were engaged in this uproariously funny pursuit when my sister threw a ‘whizzer’(small round plate with little sticky up doodads attached to a small charge that would go whizzing around furiously when the charge was lit)at some old ladies walking down the street.
Well she didn’t hit the old ladies…more like about 5-10 ft in front of them and the thing starts whizzing around,making little scrape-y noises on the asphalt. This scares the bejeezus out of one of the old ladies,who drops her purse and runs away from it with her friend chasing after her.
We cracked up and I had to stop the car because I was laughing so hard.As soon as we stopped laughing,we got out and inspected the purse.No cash…but lots of vitamens,a couple pakcs of cigarettes (which we swiped),some KleenexTM and other random,assorted old lady purse junk.
Those were good times. I miss them.
IDBB
You. stole. a. little. old. ladie’s. purse!!!
:o
On the first day one of my good friends got his driver’s license, we went out driving around. First he deliberately drove his '86 Cavalier through someone’s front yard (he had gone up a long, narrow driveway to turn around, and instead decided to just make a right and drive across the lawn back to the road). He later leaned out the window and tried to grab the orange flag from a construction worker who was directing traffic.
The same friend, a few years earlier, was trying to clear out some tall weeds in his backyard, so he got a can of lighter fluid and dumped it all over them, and dropped a match. Quite an impressive wall of flame resulted, though most of the weeds didn’t actually burn up; the fluid just burned off and went out.
The fireworks stories above are pretty good! I used to try to engineer my own fireworks by combining the wimpy store-bought ones. Some of the things I put together were pretty impressive. The most embarrassing thing is, I would probably still do this if I came across some cheap fireworks. I guess some of us never learn.
-Andrew L
I stuck one of those small, thumb-sized motors (for model airplanes and whatnot) into an electric socket. (If you put it to a battery, it’ll spin. I figured putting it in the socket would do the same). Well, a huge blue bolt shot out and smoke filled the room. I’m suprised I wasn’t electricuted. Oh, and the motor fried. 
Never did that again.
I was about 8 or 9. There was a long ditch along a road that ran downhill to a cross street. Where the ditch met the street, it sloped up in a perfect ramp. My friend, Randy Heinz, and I would ride as fast as we could down the ditch and shoot up into the street.
If a car had come along at the wrong time, we would have been creamed. Luckily it was a small town with little traffic.
And of course we knew better than to tell our parents 'cause they would have made us stop! 
We would throw water balloons from the car at other cars going the other direction on divided streets, or turning the opposite direction.
I would SO want to beat us silly, now.
A few friends of mine and me once caught an entire treehouse (a full three story treehouse) on fire after a homemade cannon we had built had gone off wrong. It worked like 30 times… then # 31 was a loud “phooof” and then flames.
That was interesting.
Hey! Me, too. We also put a yard dart through the bathroom window…while mom was sitting on the toilet.
Wonder why you can’t find those in the hardware stores anymore.
Model rockets are fun…
One time my buddy and I happend to aquire a few spare model rocket engines from school (our shop class did a unit on rocketry…).
Well, we obviously had to make use of our newfound toys… But we didn’t exactly have any rockets to put them in. But lo and behold, the mouth of a 20-oz Pepsi bottle is just over the diameter of a rocket motor. A bit of duct tape around the motor will make it fit snugly.
We then made fins (for stability, naturally) out of the cardboard back of a spiral notebook.
Now, there’s the problem of igniters. Naturally, we hadn’t thought to pilfer any of those, so we need an alternative. After some experimentation, we discovered that thin strands of wire make a pretty big spark when plugged into an 110 vold outlet.
So, long story short, we set up our ‘rocket’ in the backyard on a makeshift launcher, wired a thin strand of wire to an extension cord, shoved the strand of wire into the base of the rocket engine, and plugged it in. The rocket promptly took off straight up like a dream.
Now, up until this point, things were going according to plan. Unforunately, the inherent instablity of the rocket took over, and it started spirialing and corkscrewing back in our direction. It soon sailed over our heads, and landed on the deck just below the 4’x8’ picture window. Then the charge intended to release the ‘recovery chute’ exploded, making a nice scorch mark in the newly finished deck.
That was fun explaining to my parents.
In Junior High, I hooked up with a kid who was CLEARLY a militia candidate. He owned an SKS (a cheap knock-off of an AK-47 that isn’t fully automatic), just to give you an idea.
We had loads of fun filling spent CO2 cartridges with gunpowder from firecrackers, shoving in a wooden dowel (same diameter as the cartridge) with a hole drilled in it, loading in a magnesium fuse, HOT GLUING the dowel into place, wrapping the whole thing in duct tape, and detonating the pipe bomb.
Our shelter from the homemade fragmentation grenade? A tree.
Another fun time we had was following the mosquito spray trucks in a car. I think it was me who pointed out (after about 5 minutes or so) that this fog was designed to kill…
The title of this thread should be: Help make baby Darwin cry.
There was the time I sprayed WD-40 into a highway cone and for some reason thought I could watch it burn inside the cone.
So there I was with my face about six inches directly above the opening at the top when I dropped the match in.
FOOOOOOOMP!!!
I did a half back flip and landed on my back about six feet away clawing at my face going AAAAHHHH. What did my good buddies do? Hauled ass that’s what, as fast and far away as they could. Burned off my eyebrows, eyelashes and a bit of my hair.
When I walked into my house mom took one look shook her head and went back to making dinner and never ever said a word.
I used to make explosives with my best buddy (I won’t mention the recipe) - I shudder to think of it now, but at the time, we handled the stuff like it was completely benign; one time he made a makeshift cannon from a piece of heavy steel tube with a steel plug welded into the end; we charged it and placed it on an old tree trunk in the woods - it went off with truly horrendous bang. It took us a while to find the tube, but when we did, it had split open along the entire length and opened out flat. Quite a large section of the tree trunk was missing/shredded.
We had been planning to mount it on a wooden stock to fire it like a gun - it would certainly have killed the user.