I was just thinking of a few things I did as a kid which, if my parents had known about them, would have gotten me into a lot of trouble. But I kept my mouth shut, so I got away with them.
Let’s see. Here’s a list:
I spilled a whole glass of milk in my bedroom, and rather than run for towels and so tip off my mom, I used my giant teddy bear to sop up all the milk off the wood floor. I always worried she’d wonder why my teddy bear had sticky spikey fur and smelled sour, but she never caught on.
I and another little girl went to a construction site down the street, and sat on the edge of a big open pit and kicked our heels against the dirt. I lost one of my shoes down in the pit and was terrified that I’d go home with a missing shoe and get in trouble. But a workman lifted my shoe up to me and told us to get the hell out of there. If my mom had known where we were and what we were doing, I’d have been in a world of trouble.
I was fascinated with cooking and wanted to try cracking an egg myself. I stole an egg out of the fridge, worried that my mom would notice one was missing, but she never did. I took it out behind the garage and cracked it onto the grass like a pro. I could cover up the egg white and yolk with dirt, but what to do with the shell? I threw it under a utility trailer we had behind the garage. A couple of months later, my dad sold the trailer and was cleaning up the now-exposed ground which had been underneath it. I hovered nearby, sick with worry that he’d find that eggshell and I’d be exposed. Did I mention that my parents were Depression babies and that wasting food in our house was a capital crime? He did find the shell, but luckily just said “huh, an eggshell”, and tossed it aside. Phew.
My brother had a pellet gun or air rifle. One day, when everyone was out of the house, I got it and took aim at a pigeon sitting on the very top of our garage. To my surprise, I hit the pigeon with my first and only shot out of that gun. It spiraled into the air and fell somewhere in the neighbor’s yard. I was shocked and crying. I killed a bird! I hurriedly put the gun back in my brother’s room and never touched it again. No one ever found out.
How about your early crimes that your parents never discovered?
I was the trusted straight A student in high school. I was also the yearbook photographer. When I got bored, I’d wander around town carrying my camera. I was always assumed to be on legitimate business.
I stole a cigarette or three from my dad’s pack, and snuck into a large cavern in the bushes beside the house with a pack of matches to (try to) smoke them. Ugh, I could never finish one, and never smoked, or tried smoking, ever again. I guess if he knew, he thought letting me go ahead would teach me not to smoke, and he’d be right.
Oh yeah, I stole and smoked one of my mom’s Kents behind the said garage. She did find out, because I told her about it when I was about thirty years old. She was really pissed and tried to dress me down.
Oh boy. Well, of of the top of my head, the first one that comes up -
Another pellet gun/bb gun story.
A cousin was visiting. We had a few bb guns. Sitting on the back porch I randomly shot our 1950 Massey Ferguson Tractor. We/I used it to mow our 5 acres. After I shot I got a satisfying ‘Ping’. Hahahah.
So what can you hurt on a 1950 tractor from 100 feet away? It’s mostly cast iron.
Well, the radiator is not cast iron. Shit, shit, shit. Time to cover my tracks.
We claimed that we set a box for a target in the bucket to use as a back stop, and oops, our aim wasn’t very good.
When I was a kid, my mom had a baby palm tree in a pot on the coffee table. One night, when I was maybe nine or ten, my friend came over to spend the night while our parents went to a party a few doors down. My friend and I were crawling head-first into our sleeping bags, then standing up and wrestling. One of us fell across the coffee table, and broke the little tree into three pieces.
I quickly thought of a plan. I went out to the garage and grabbed my dad’s superglue, and fixed the tree. Good as new!
Over the next couple of months, the tree went into a decline. My mother tried valiantly to keep it alive, but her efforts were for naught. She never did figure out what mysterious illness overtook her little tree…
I was quite the firebug as a kid and was lighting some balled up paper towels soaked in various household chemicals I found in the storage room and tossing them into our fireplace. One caught an unfortunate air current and floated out to the carpet in front of the fireplace and by the time I stomped it out had burned a nice hole in the carpet.
I covered it with something or other and later that night we had a regular fire in the fireplace. I waited till the family had left the room and when they returned claimed an ember had jumped out onto the floor so I quickly used the poker and ash dust pan to throw it back in the fire.
I was lauded for my quick thinking and never fessed up to the original misdeed.
Did your neighborhood have a “bad kid”? Mine did, and it was my friend Adam from around the corner. I was a good kid by temperament, but Adam could always rope me into being bad.
He was a firebug and I once abetted as he set a fire in vacant lot behind his house. It started to spread and we panicked, then heard sirens which increased our panic. We ran, but quickly got winded and had to stop. Turned out the sirens weren’t for us and the fire didn’t flare up uncontrollably, but I will never forget that feeling of panic.
He and I set off fireworks, did crazy and dangerous stunts on our bikes, took the train to another city without our parents knowing, hunted dirty magazines and he once had a planned fight with another kid in the neighborhood to settle something or other.
My buddy Brian and I liked to play with matches. We were in an alley behind a business and we were playing an idiotic game where we would throw a lit match into a dumpster and play chicken until one of us put it out. You can guess what happened. It got out of control and we booked it out of there. We literally started a dumpster fire. It was nowhere near where it could catch anything else but the fire department was called anyway.
I killed bees. I was hanging out with another kid from my class who was probably a bit more of the type my parents would prefer I didn’t spend time with. We were walking across a playing field; there were bumblebees on the clover. He leapt and stamped on one. I copied. We destroyed dozens of bees for no good reason. Laughing as we did.
This was nearly 50 years ago and I still feel bad when I think about it.
Add to the bb gun stories. Not me, but my sister-in-law. Playing “Annie Oakley” with her brother’s gun, she shot out a window in the school across the street. Said “oops” to herself and put the gun back. Never mentioned it to anyone.
Her brother, my husband, was blamed by the school (not sure why except they knew he lived across the street and had a bb gun). He was highly indignant at being unjustly accused, and they never fully believed him. It was just a few years ago that he found out his sister was the culprit. She in turn did not know anyone had accused him, as neither he nor anyone else thought to ask his sweet little sister if she knew anything about it. They both had a good laugh about it.
I was such an annoying little rule follower as a kid.
The only thing that comes to mind is we had a construction site down the road from our house. It was there a long time. From what I remember it was just mounds of dirt. We were all over that site. Going down giant dirt mounds on bikes. Probably not a good idea.
Y’all are gonna think I’m awful.
But here goes,
My baby brother Harry was the biggest, stinkiest, twerp that ever walked.
Well, in my world anyway.
He could get on my last nerve so fast.
One afternoon I wanted to watch Scooby Doo on TV. He wanted to watch Power Rangers or some crap.
An argument ensued. Followed us into the kitchen. He got the glass pitcher of orange juice out of the fridge. I grabbed it. He wasn’t supposed to have it. I told him so.
He grabs and I step back 4 or 5 steps. He called me a bad name. I thinking it was like “dumb poopy head” or close.
I over hand throw the glass pitcher at him. He throws up his arm and it whacks and breaks right into his elbow.
Well, to stop this confession, he was taken to the hospital and got glass shards picked out and 8 stitches.
The dumb poopy head never told on me. Ever.
I was kinda in his debt as long as he didn’t.
He may not have been dumb as I thought.
My Daddy never knew.
It was a bright, sunny, summer day. It was also garbage pick-up day. My cohort and I found a large, round, vanity mirror that someone was discarding.
We picked it up and played around with it, aiming the reflection of the sun at various objects. Then we espied the mailman walking his route across the street.
So, naturally, we aimed the ray of the sun directly into his eyes. He stumbled, fell, scattered his mailbag, and began running after us, screaming out words I was much too young to hear.
We were kids so we easily outran him and hid somewhere in the neighborhood. I’ve never told a soul.
In the mid 60s, it was my night (Monday as I recall) to do the dishes. I threw something across the kitchen that was intended to go into the trash can under a window. My aim was off (a tad high) and it broke the glass behind the closed curtains. The broken glass went outward (against the storm window which didn’t break) and none of it fell to the floor or landed on the sill.
I heard the window break and took a look, but everyone else was in the living room watching TV so I just went on about my business. One day, the following week, my dad asked if I knew anything about the broken kitchen window. I pleaded ignorance (and since every other of the 5 of us kids had a night in the kitchen, and because the curtains apparently stayed closed the whole week) my dad just muttered something about “nobody knows anything” and walked away.
My mom was kind of klutzy so he might have figured she did it.
I must’ve been around 7, and my cousin and I snuck open a Coke and each had a big drink. We were so BAD! Coke was for grown-ups, or when you were sick, definitely only distributed by parents. So we filled the bottle up with water and stuck the cap back on (olden days when coke came in glass bottles with metal caps).
Replying to my own post because I just realized this thread is about undetected misdeeds. Mine was certainly eventually detected but I went unpunished because…I lied about it. (If this were a court of law, I feel there was insufficient evidence and I wouldn’t be forced to testify against myself so I don’t feel too bad about it.)
