I did this once as a kid. The basement walls for one home had been poured and the forms removed, and the outside of the walls had been coated with fresh tar to waterproof it - but they hadn’t yet backfilled the gap outside of the walls. My friend and I were playing around near this, lost our balance and fell into the gap along the outside of the walls. There was room in this gap to walk back and forth - through a deep puddle of tar, barefoot - and it took us a while to find a spot where we could climb out. By the time we escaped, our legs and feet were well-coated with tar, and my sister used rags soaked in gasoline to clean it off. :eek:
Mumbley peg - The way we played it involved basically throwing a knife near each others feet.
Also, my Grandpa had a small vial full of mercury. When we were kids we would pour it into the palm of our hands and roll it around and poke at it and such.
Sounds stupid next to all of the outdoor adventures listed already but…I was heavily in to BBSing (participating in the Bulletin Board System online culture) as a young teen, when nobody was the least bit aware of social cyber security or online predators. I know for a fact I nearly got myself involved with at least 2 different older guys, maybe more, who would have done some nasty sexual shit to me had I been successful. Thank god my parents found it all to be just plain weird and kept me from getting too far (much to my dismay. At the time). When I started driving I did meet up with other BBSers from time to time but they were other kids my age. Needless to say, I’m terrified of my nieces being online these days, just because I know how alluring some of those bad folks can be.
Starting little fires in the grass and see if we could still put them out in time. We could, but jeez.
My brother fancied himself William Tell, and shot his BB gun at my feet when I, his little sis, sat reading in the garden. When he hit me and I yelled, he said indignantly: " but you moved!"
ours ran into one of the busiest streets in town and the only reason it stopped is no one pushed anyone too hard
we did using tires and flattened cardboard boxes … and in the spring big wheels wagons oh and shopping carts …
Only time we got caught was when cousin pushed me and my toddler bro down in a cart in winter and it didn’t stop due to ice and my uncle missed us by a foot or two in his pickup …
I never had any training at all in proper technique for jumping horses, not did any of my horses. Yet off we went, jumping over and across everything I could think of. And occasionally being surprised what my mare would jump over. The key seemed to be going fast. If you could get the horse going fast enough you could jump over anything. Right?
Obviously, no helmet.
We also climbed the water towers, but everybody did that and it didn’t seem dangerous.
I was about thirteen when I got my hands on The Anarchist’s Cookbook, and sometimes I am amazed I still have all ten fingers.
Bicycles
- jumping on home made ramps over various things, like the creek. Ramp failure, a common occurance, led to awesome wrecks as did landing short of the mark.
- making our own choppers by using a hacksaw to cut the front forks off an old bike, shove them onto our bike by hand and remounting the front tire. Any significant bump would cause the forks to separate and dig the ground, sending the rider(s) over the handlebars
Climbing young pine trees, roughly 20 feet high, to the very top , leaning out so the tree bent, grabbing the next tree and transferring. We would see who could go the farthest before they couldn’t reach the next tree. Occasionally the top would snap out of the bending tree and the “rider” would hit he ground.
Putting wooden matchsticks in the barrel of our BB guns and playing war.
Car surfing by hanging on to the roof while a friend drove down the road.
It’s a wonder we made it to adulthood.
I rode my horse everywhere alone and no one ever knew where I was (nor ever asked nor cared, I was a rather unparented child even for those days). I swam her across ponds, bushwhacked through hills. Lots of crazy things happened including an encounter with quicksand but the only harm that ever came to me was I was cleaning my horse’s stall once in flipflops and it stepped on my little toe. Probably broke it. I never told anyone though, because it was so stupid.
Boy, this brings back some memories! We did most of this shit, as well (but no trains or water towers where I grew up).
We did crazy stuff in the mountains and forests. Two teams would build “forts” and then we would go to war throwing stuff back and forth. Only rule was “No Big Rocks”. Pine Cones, sticks, whatever.
We did most of the stuff that is now considered “Extreme” sports, but with no safety equipment whatsoever.
I’ve got some epic bike tragedy stories. And we had Motorcycles!
-Crossing a bridge on the ledge over the river (but not that high)
-Climbing on concrete electric poles like the one on this picture (you can see how easily you can climb using the holes)
-Climbing in an abandoned stone quary
Reading someone else’s post reminded me of something else : throwing darts above and besides the head of a friend, and having the friend throw darts around my head to. We did that only once, though.
Did that plenty of time. And in school, during class, since there was this huge old thermometer or barometer. In plain view of the teacher, who was letting me play with it. She also let me bring some at home, several times.
Mercury is really fun.
My buddies and I doing handstands on skateboards, downhill on a busy four-lane street, at night.
We had the same rule (70s, French countryside).
Me and my brothers did all that stuff. My younger brother fell out of a tree from a very high branch. He was knocked unconscious and I just left him on the ground. I thought for sure he was dead. I wandered back home a few hours later to everyone all excited cause they had to take him to the hospital. My older brother found him and got him home. I never told I knew he fell and he apparently didn’t remember any of it. Whew, saved by amnesia.
Honestly, most of the stuff in this thread was completely commonplace for me as a kid.
Being in Canada you can add “bumper jumping.” On snowy days you could catch a ride by latching onto the rear bumper of a passing car and sliding behind it for blocks.
We used to hang out at a cove on Cook Inlet in Anchorage, which is where the trains went through. There was a trestle that spanned a small creek. We used to climb out underneath the trestle (onto the wooden piers and steel supports) and wait for a train to cross. We would also walk across the trestle in a scene right out of the movie “Stand By Me”, including listening to the rails to see if a train was coming. While you would probably survive a fall from the trestle, a worse fate awaited you if you got stuck in that nasty mud that was (and is) everywhere in that cove. People have drowned after becoming stuck on the mud flats.
We also used to go out onto the ice at the same location and try to break floes off. Dangerous fun.
And there was the ever popular pastime of blowing shit up with M-80s and cherry bombs, which were legal back then.
Leaffan: we called that “hooky bobbing”.
My brother and I use to have BB gun fights. To avoid getting hit we’d shoot at each other from behind whatever cover we could get. But of course you had to stick your head out to see your target. Which meant that what we were doing was shooting at each other’s faces.
We used to go tobogganing at a hill behind my grandparent’s house. We’d pack six or seven of us on the toboggan. Halfway down the hill there was a barb wire fence. We could toboggan under it as long as everyone leaned way back. We would always try to get as close as possible before leaning back. The problem (besides the obvious) was that we were packed so tightly together in the toboggan, you couldn’t lean back unless the person behind you had already leaned back. So the last person in the toboggan had to lean back first and they had the least incentive to lean back early because they were farthest from the fence.
We used to also play pirates at my grandparent’s house. We’d play it in their hay barn. This game involved climbing up into the rafter beams, which were the masts of the ship. These were fifteen or more feet above the wood floor and we’d be running around and jumping between them.
My children had go-carts. They used to scare me to death riding them. Racing and playing chicken. They were never injured, I am not sure how. My middle daughter was the most accident prone. She broke her leg on the trampoline, she didn’t fall off. We weren’t sure how it happend. She had several broken bones and stitches. My son broke his arm falling out of a chair. You just never know what will injure you. I would’ve bet on go-carts, 4-wheelers or horses. But that never happened. The lil’wrekker never has had a broken bone or stitches. She had to have her chin glued together after a tumble, that’s all. She was kinda clingy and not very adventuresome like her older sibs.
Yeah - me too - we would climb any tree as high as the tree permitted - we would also think nothing of swinging around between branches whilst up there. I went back to a few of my childhood haunts and recognised some of the trees I used to climb - I started climbing one, but the fear of falling kicked in as soon as I was 6 feet off the ground - by the time I got up to any kind of height, I was nearly paralysed with it (obviously the trees have grown a bit taller now, but not that much taller)