In my neighborhood a couple of years ago. A 12 year old and his friends decided that it was fun to splash a tiny bit of gasoline onto some concrete and light it up.
It was great fun the first few times.
Oh, did I mention it was in the basement of the kids house?
Yes, he burnt the entire house down. Everyone got out luckily. When I went over to watch (behind the barricades) it was to see the fire department simply trying to make sure the houses on the opposite sides did not get involved.
Saw it the next day. The house was not just damaged; It was a smoking pit.
Photos, heirlooms, personal effects, cars in the garage… The family literally got out with the clothes on their backs.
I have often wondered what gets said when anyone says “Hey, has anybody seen my… Oh never mind, Billy destroyed it…”
We didn’t have to pay for it, but my daughter pried the grout out from between the tiles in the school bathroom multiple times before she was caught. She got suspended for that one.
I don’t recall any costly damage as small children, but eventually they became old enough to drive. It doesn’t take a lot to rack up the bills when you hit a tree looking at a duck or ruin a front end driving over a parking lot divider.
I have a seasonal story for this one. When my cousin was about 9, she went up in the attic to look for her Christmas presents that were hidden there. She took a pack of matches to help light the way. Burned the house down to the ground.
The damage I inflicted on my parents’ house happened when I had just gotten my learner’s permit. My mom asked me to back my dad’s stick-shift pick-up out of the garage. I bunny-hopped it right through the living room wall. I have no idea what the bill was, but it couldn’t have been cheap.
When I was growing up, we had one of those fridges where the metal ice cube trays each had their own slot in the freezer (bottom-freezer fridge). This was long before frost-free was a thing, and the trays tended to get frost buildup and stick to the slot (also metal).
My brother decided to try to pry one loose. Using a table knife.
Which slipped.
And cut through the back of the fridge, severing the freon lines.
Apparently it was not repairable, so the parents had to shell out a fair bit of cash for a new fridge.
Mine haven’t done anything too heinous yet, though I may change my story when I see what our auto insurance rate jumps to this spring - he’s had one fender-bender which did no damage to our car but did result in a claim for the car he hit. Ouch.
My parents had a small cabinet that held all their crystal glassware. Wine glasses, cocktail glasses, shot glasses, a whole range. My brother was sitting on the floor next to it, and grabbed the top to pull himself up. Instead he pulled the cabinet over, breaking several hundred of dollars worth of glasses. He’s never lived that down.
My daughter was doing an Insanity Workout session in front of the 55" 3D SmartTV I had won nine months prior when her phone notified her of an incoming text. Not wanting to be distracted, she picked up the phone to silence it. What she DIDN’T do was stop moving her arms. The phone flew from her hand, right into the surface of the screen, which cracked, rendering the TV into nothing more than a piece of art mounted to the wall. And not particularly interesting-looking art, at that.
I couldn’t swing the cost of a direct replacement, but I did spend $1500 on a 50" model, this time WITH a protection plan.
When she was growing up, my sister signed up my phone to a data plan to surf the web, and I didn’t notice it was charging me $3 a month until two years later.
Son backed one of our cars through the garage door. :smack:
Causing about $5,000 of damage to the door and the vehicle. Separate insurance policies for home and car, different levels of deductible…decided in the end to just eat it as the policy coverage would have only been about $500 after the dust settled.
January 2014, the depths of the polar vortex. #1 Simmerson (age 13 at the time) spent a lot of time sitting in front of the fireplace. Occasionally, he’d get too warm. One evening, after everyone else had gone to bed, he decided it was bedtime too, but he was still a little toasty from the fire. What’s the best way to cool down? Why, turn the air conditioner on, of course! Doesn’t matter that it’s 20 below outside. Dammit, I’m hot! So I wake up at 2AM and it is, to say the least, VERY COLD. I check the thermostat: 46˚. In the basement, the lines coming in from the unit outside are covered in a thick coat of ice. I’m thinking, goodbye AC. Fortunately, the AC still works, even after the kid, despite being sternly cautioned not to ever do that again… did it again.
What he actually did destroy was one of a pair of expensive recording studio monitors. He decided he wanted to see what would happen if he cranked the volume on the digital audio interface. That was over a year ago and I haven’t been able to afford to repair it. I use headphones a lot now.
I don’t know the total cost, but at age 4 or 5 I stole the car while my mom napped, backed it across the street, through the neighbors fence and into a ditch. Even in 1980 that had to cost a decent bit
Son, at age 5: tried to play Batman by swinging from the ceiling fan in his bedroom. Ripped the whole fixture down, luckily my husband is a contractor so he was able to fix it himself. He also whacked his head on the dresser when he fell and split his forehead open, so he got a nice trip to the ER and a ton of stitches out of the deal. He still has the scar.
Daughter, at nine-ish: TV remote “slipped right out of her hands” :rolleyes: right into the front of the 30 gallon fish tank. Glass fragments and water everywhere. We had to pay for a carpet cleaning service and the place still smelled like a swamp for ages afterwards. We withheld her allowance for a month after that one to teach her a lesson and offset the cost of cleaning up the mess, which was totally unfair because she made sure to rescue the fish into drinking glasses and soak up the water with every towel in the house.
-Started a house fire at age 4. Neighbors helped me fight it while we waited for the firetruck, so it didn’t burn down, we just had to move out for six months while the landlord’s insurance repaired it. My rental policy on our personal property was woefully inadequate, took me a few years to be able to replace everything.
-At 12 he got angry with me over something and instead of being outside playing, was outside in my new vehicle slicing up the leather seats with a pilfered paring knife.
-Broke a toilet at 13. He musta thought it was a recliner model or needed a lot more fiber, the tank stayed bolted to the base but completely broke into a million pieces. Luckily I was home to shut off the water supply so just the replacement of the toilet is all it cost and no flooding damage.
-At 14 went clean through the sliding glass door in the middle of winter. Running to go outside, hand outstretched to yank it open, overestimated his velocity. Heart-stopping moment that one was, I was standing five feet away and thought he’d be cut to ribbons, turned out the door was installed one year after safety glass started being commonly used.
-Somehow cracked a vanity top sink in half when he was 16. I suspect there might have been a flaw in it somehow, since he wasn’t horsing around or anything but just leaning on it to wipe the mirror clean.
-Dozens of drywall repairs over the years. The normal assortment of accidents, plus plenty of ragey fist moments, and a few years as a teenager spent creating holes in his bedroom walls to hide contraband, covering them up with posters or furniture, until there was more damage than intact wall. That room got entirely redone, not patched.
On the plus side, not once has he ever asked me to buy him designer sneakers or jeans.
We had these steep ass stairs leading to the basement where my room was. As a teen I’d often skip a few running down to my room, or sometimes jump and skip the last 9 or so all together.
One day I tried the latter and had my hand on the wooden handrail to brace myself. The handrail (about a 12 foot long single piece) snapped and I hurtled down the stairs, kicking the door at the bottom which I tore the door and the frame right off of the studs and landed flat on my back. Aside from some aches and bruises I was ok But I imagine the hand rail and a new door and frame cost a bit to install.
Cars. Three, I seem to recall. Totaled by the insurance companies despite one having only what I considered minor damage. But the insurance payouts didn’t anywhere near cover buying another used car, so…thousands I don’t want to think about. And one of the current cars has so many dents I’ll be lucky to get $500 out of it, after replacing the whole transmission when one of them ran over a toolbox in the roadway.
Not my kid, but my mean-tempered (now ex) husband. He put his fist through every single door in the house and knocked both folding doors off their rails. We never did replace them, so technically I guess it didn’t cost us anything. Sad.
