From a conversation in the waking, but SDMB is a much bigger group.
Contraband can be defined as anything you didn’t want your parents to find whether it was love notes, porn, gold bars or 6 kilos of uncut heroin.
My favorite places:
-For flat paper (report cards, notes from teachers, etc.): taped to the roof of the cabinet under the sink. Later I taped a manila envelope large enough to stash two porn mags in under one sink.
For my diversionary diary (the one that I knew my mother would read if she came across so I didn’t put anything incendiary into it): between my mattress and box springs
For my “real” diary (the Procopius’s Secret History one): I had a giant Snoopy stuffed animal, a hand me down from my brother and sister. He had a “broken neck”, meaning years of wear and tear made his head tilt to the side, and he wore a homemade collar- basically a homemade neck brace- to prop it up. What I don’t think anybody ever learned was that under that collar he also had a cut throat where I could reach into the stuffing and hide something at hand’s length. He lived in the back of a closet and was assumed to be kept for sentimental value.
For anything larger than a lunchbox- rare but occasionally happened: under a pile of old clothes and quilt tops on the shelf of my parents’ walk-in-closet. I figured it would be the last place they’d look, and usually such stuff was just there until I could move it off-site.
I guess I was a good little boy, because I don’t remember having to hide anything.
Apart from one occasion when I tried to make a D look like a B my reports transfered from my school to my parents unaltered. They weren’t good reports. I just didn’t always care that I got bad reports.
I hid my porn magazines under the rug in my bedroom and placed a foot locker on top of the spot. I don’t think anyone ever found them. The ones I hid under my mattress disappeared, but the ones under the rug never did.
I had a bed with drawers in the base. I’d pull a drawer all the way out and put contraband on the floor underneath or in the rather large empty space behind the drawers.
When I was in the first grade my work papers from school were not up to par so whenever I received a bad grade on a paper while walking home I would stuff it into cinderblocks stacked in front of a neighbor’s house. This went on for months paper after paper and I never seemed to figure out the blocks would one day be used and eventually be found. One very bad day a wind storm occurred and all my bad papers with my name on them were blowing all around the neighborhood. For days after helpful residents were bringing my Ds & Fs to my door. Needless to say my parents were pissed and embarrassed. It’s funny, child logic where did I think the papers were going to end up?
I hid four torn pages from a porn magazine in a He-Man, Masters of the Universe story book. The book came with a 45 record that fit in a pocket on the inside of the back cover. That’s where the pages of the dirty magazine went. I hid smokeless tobacco (dip) under the driver’s seat of my car (it rested on top of something - it wasn’t on the floor) and cigarettes in the side pocket of my golf bag, behind the folded rain hood. I generally finished booze within hours of purchase.
In the mid-eighties, my computer was a Coleco Adam.
The Adam had a spacious cavity in the main unit, where the expansion slots were, which put the Millennium Falcon to shame as far as concealment was concerned. (“You put your weed in it!”) My parents would never have thought to look in there in a million years.
My parents were very lax about what their kids got up to, rarely entered my room without knocking and it such a mess it would take a lot of searching to find anything so I stashed drugs, booze, shoplifted goods etc. wherever was most convenient at the time.
Bwhaaa… oh man, nice to see a bunch of others were equally secretive. Geez, I’d forgotton all about this but it’s floodin’ back.
In my closet was a chest of drawers. The top couple of inches above the upper drawer had a thin board across to give it proportion and I’d pried that back to reveal a short but amble enclosure. This is where I kept fireworks, pocketknives, grass, magazines, anything considered vice.
Later I discovered a loose board forming the base of a windowseat. Same contraband, more volume.
It’s funny how technology changes things…all the stories about hiding/changing grades or report cards are out of date already. My son just started kindergarten and already I have online access to all his grades and attendance. My thoughts on this were, this is great for parents but I am sure glad this did not exist when I was in school!
Same here. But we also (guys anyway) had to hide our porn (most of which for me was actually PG-13 except for one mag I stole from my brother) in a physical hidey-hole; today you just have to know how to delete your history and since there are so many kids more compu-literate than their parents it’s often really easy. So it balances.
Inside my bean-bag chair. There was a little zipper on the bottom.
I learned pretty quickly that I had to spray my hand with Static Guard before I put anything in or took anything out - those little beans would stick to everything.
Yep, in the bean bag chair! When I was a teenager, I hid my birth control pills in there. No one ever came in and tossed my room, but it was an easy and convenient place to hide contraband and I kept that thing for years. Then I graduated to a metal box with a lock and key, kept under the bed with a lot of other stuff.
Myt closet was one of those that had a hanging rod and a shelf above.
The rod was a hollow metal pipe. I loosened the top shelf, slipped out the end of the hanging rod and stuffed my stash inside, then put the rod and the shelf back.
I did very much the same with a hollow bathroom towel rod. I was staying the summer at my aunts an uncles and had a huge bedroom at the far end of the house with it’s own bathroom.
Also, the back seat of my '62 Olds had a fold down armrest. There was a flap you could pull down behind that and a little place you could hang stuff. But then in the late 70’s I also had a place I could hang my mj pipe while I drove around and smoked. I can’t imagine how many times I forgot about it and just let it hang there in the school parking lot. Times have changed.
Weed was taped to a drawer somehow - I was trying to think how, and I can’t remember! Too much weed back in the day, I guess! My older sister taught me all the good hidey-holes.
This thread reminds me of a book - A Child’s Garden of Grass. I remember it showed how to make a pipe out of a “dur-dur” - an empty toilet paper roll!
My older sister taught me all the good hidey-holes.
