Obviously, some of the members of the forum still qualify as “kids”, at least when compared to us “old farts”, but all of us at some time, has done something which was fun at the time, but which, with time and maturity, now seems incredibly stupid. Reading Dakota’s wartime story in the “how old are you?” thread immediately brought to mind a couple of things I did way back in the 60’s. I don’t mind admitting they are pretty dumb things, but hey, I was only sixteen or so….
My back fence was also the school fence. The school buildings were located about 200 metres or so from the fence and had galvanised iron roofing.
My younger brother and I used to jam a piece of half inch pipe into the ground, drop a penny bunger in, followed by a marble. By varying the angle of the pipe, we could lob the marble onto the school roof, and were completely hidden by our fence. I can imagine what it must have been like inside the classrooms, because the noise the marble made when it hit the roof was most noticeable, even at the distance we were from the school, but the sound of our mortar was very muffled because of its small bore and fact that the explosion of the bunger was usually below ground level. Great fun, and no damage to the school.
The other thing was to set old dumped cars on fire. This was also good fun, until one day, the forest around the car caught alight. My mate and I headed for the hills, no waiting around to watch the fun or get caught with that one. Missed all the action. Bummer.
Anybody else with some “dumb tales but true?
Regards
Wombat
By: T5 - 5th November 2002 at 00:47
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
Firstly, it must have been in summer 1997, I was with a friend down by a small stream. I was only 12 years old and I thought of myself as a rebel so we agreed that lighting small fires would be fun. Unfortunately, it had been a dry summer and so any plants surrounding the newspaper we lit started to burn too! Our reaction was to kick the burning paper into the river, not realising that as we done so, it caught loads of dried up plants on it’s way in and set them off too. A guy walking his dog gave us a telling off and the situation was soon under control.
Also, when we were moving house, we decided to hire a lorry ourself as we were only moving about 4 miles up the road, it seemed a far cheaper option. It was one of the lorries with a lift on the back and in order to activate the lift, you had to start the engine. I volunteered to get some empty boxes from the back of the lorry which required the key – I turn the key and the lorry just shot backwards into a concrete post holding a 6ft garden fence together. It smashed this to pieces and I went numb. What was left of the post was stopping the lorry from going back any further so I had to rush inside my house and break the news to my family. As my dad is in the army, it was an army house and is happened in a car park – we didn’t have drive ways or garages. The house which suffered was empty at the time and we were able to sort the fence out (a little) and continue moving house.
By: A330Crazy - 4th November 2002 at 23:41
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
I broke open a video tape and tied the tape across my road, from lamp post to lamp post, so that a car or a bike would go through it, got caught though by a passing motorist.
Other things include, doing forward rolls down the stairs, don’t know why, just seemed like something to do at the time!?!
And I used to play-wrestle with my friends alot in Junior school, which always resulted in some sort of injury.
By: kev35 - 4th November 2002 at 22:47
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
[updated:LAST EDITED ON 04-11-02 AT 10:50 PM (GMT)]There was a group of us lads all about twelve or thirteen who used to hang around together and we all were into war films. One school holiday we’d all watched some film at the weekend, can’t remember which one but it had abseiling in it. So, of course, we decided we could do that. All we needed was a couple of old washing lines (which we, errr, acquired). A couple of goes at making a harness and the use of one of the lads Grandads ARP steel helmets and we were off. Straight from the balcony of an eighth floor flat!
Really, it seemed such a good idea right up until the point when the fire brigade arrived after Andy, our intrepid test pilot got stuck half way down.
We received a right dressing down for that and it was pointed out to us the risk we’d put the firemen to. I said they could have just cut the rope… I got such a belt round the ear from the local policeman who’d turned up I saw stars for a week!
Ahhhhh… what it is to be young and stupid.
Regards,
kev35
By: sparky - 4th November 2002 at 22:25
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
At the age of twelve I was the youngest of our group of friends so it was me who was nominated to try things out first.
One summer holiday one of the older guys bought an old Francis Barnet motorbike which we all learned to ride and used to do a great impression of Steve McQueen riding across Salibury Plain!
One evening it was decided that we should take turns in riding around the farm yard where the bike was kept, in one gate and out the other, with the rest of the gang sitting on the top of a haystack shooting at the rider with air-rifles (seemed quit sensible at the time!!).
I when first (riding like a maniac) and was so pleased no one had managed to shot me that I went up the bank at the side of the farm track and ripped open the top of my knee on an iron bar sticking out of the ground. (Never liked the purple cords anyway!!)
And spent a happy evening in Salisbury casualty dept. and missed the start of school (shame) 🙂
By: dcfly - 4th November 2002 at 16:06
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
Cling film was always the favourite to stretch over the toilet seat
Thank God we grow up
sober at last Dave
By: KabirT - 4th November 2002 at 06:07
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
i did quite rough things…. like locking myself in bathroom for 8 hrs, putting glue on all seats before guests came etc.
By: JAG - 4th November 2002 at 03:22
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
You can imagine.. though in Yugoslavia the tradition is for our version of santa the dedamraz (grenpa frosty) to deliver gifts on new years eve.. not the X-mas.. But that yeat somehow the new Skiing Equipment i was expecting didnt arrive. 🙂
By: dcfly - 3rd November 2002 at 18:48
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
Jag…. I bet you xmas stocking wasnt very full!
The dumbest thing I ever did (well, the only one I can remember at the moment,). Me and my best mate of the time, I think his name was Gary, used to play a game called dodging the arrow, yes you’ve guessed it, we used to stand one each end of the garden and take it turns to fire an arrow from a homemade bow at each other, the object was to dodge the arrow (surprise! surprise!)we both thought it was great fun until one day I wasn’t quick enough and the arrow, with its wire bound tip , caught me just above the right eye, I went screaming to my mum with blood pouring down my face while Gary made himself very scarce.
The afteroon was spent in A&E just to find out that the only injury I had was a badly bruised head, an inch further down and I’d have been blinded, plus a small cut (but so much blood!)
While me and Gary remained good mates the incident put a bit of a strain on both families, each blaming the others son for being a bad influence on their own,I could never understand all the fuss.
Gladly the feud didnt last that long
sober at last
Dave
By: JAG - 3rd November 2002 at 03:04
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
Having discovered the wonders of electrical short circuit at eage of 8. I joined ends of two wires and stuck the other end into a power point.. blowing up all fuses in my home, and giving myself a shock that threw me on the ground.. undetered i then moved to the hallway of my building repeating the experiment and screwing up the local transformer station in the basement of my building and cutting power to my and two neighboruing appartment builidings which jointly had about 150 appartments.. there was not power for 3 days.. it was mid december and about 10 below 0.. my popularity after that simply skyrocketed among the neighbours.
By: coanda - 2nd November 2002 at 11:07
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
yeah err i had a forest/fire incident not too many years ago…..
coanda
By: EHVB - 2nd November 2002 at 07:03
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
In an attempt to imitate Batman, I jumped as a 8 years old (in full Batman outfitt), from the 6 mtr high roof of the holidayhome in Spain. I landed right between the rocks and plants in the garden with a huge headwound that had to be stitched.
By: dcfly - 2nd November 2002 at 06:16
RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.
[updated:LAST EDITED ON 02-11-02 AT 06:16 AM (GMT)]looking back they were dumb things to do, but I bet you had some fun at the time.
And I bet your mum thought you were a good little boy as well
lol!! yeah right!
sober at last
Dave
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November 2, 2002 at 5:15 am