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what's the dumbest thing you did as a kid?

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iroast said:
Would it have helped if your parents explained to you the dangers of what you did, including being kidnapped/killed?
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lol Nope, I'm sure. He's older than me and that just wasn't a discussion back then. When I was 5, I walked to kindergarten that was a little more than a quarter mile away. 3rd grade was 3 miles but at least it wasn't up hill both ways and snowing.
 
skull said:
But short circuits pull higher amps than circuit breaker rating before the breaker can trip. That why big shorts can trip the main and the transformer cut out. It has nothing to with demand on the rest of the system being high.
Click to expand...

What? Lookit, how hard is this to understand? Yes, yes I said lookit. Blame Elaine form Seinfeld. Anywho...comedy time is over.

If you pull 30 amps your outlet's 15 amp breaker should trip and prevent the transformer's breaker with a much higher current rating feeding multiple homes from tripping. Is there some reason why the transformer and main are so much faster tripping than the outlet's fuse because if not I don't get it.
 
Not the worst but that would require to admitting to what may be criminal activity..

I always wore button fly 501s.

I put a firecracker between the buttons of the trousers with the tip and fuse pointing out. I was going to show off by lighting the fuse and then putting it out with my fingertips.

I lit in and as I reached down to snuff it out I accidently knocked it all the way in. I panicked and the only thing I could think to do was quickly and fiercely hammerfist my crotch to put it out. I succeeded in putting it out. I succeeded in beating the crap out of my groin and falling, doubled over in pain.

My brothers still laugh about it today and it was about 44 years ago.
 
Wow...where to begin?

First, it's amazing that I was never arrested or prosecuted for any of the stupid criminal acts I committed when I was young. No idea why Fortune smiled on my stupidity so, so many times. That said, and in no particular order, to the list:

1. Joining the USMC at 17. It ended up being a great decision but I joined for the stupid reason of just wanting to get away from my parents. My DI made me realize that my parents weren't all that bad after all. It took him about three minutes to convince me of this.

2. A friend of mine in school was beaten by a Mexican gang who had an old school low rider. One day I'm in the high school parking lot and I bashed in the driver's side window and tossed in a lit highway flare. Those guys weren't so badass anymore riding the bus with everyone else.

3. Another idiot attacked me when I was 15. Another lit highway flare burned his house to the ground. (I had a thing for highway flares!)

4. I jumped feet-first off of the top of the old bridge at Meiss Road on the Cosumnes River. This was about 75 feet above the water which was itself about ten feet deep. My feet stuck in the mud and I nearly drowned trying to get out. Never did that one again.

5. A neighbor nearby put up a ham radio mast around 1979 and every time he'd talk we'd hear it on our TV. All the time. He didn't care when the neighbors complained. So New Year's one year I had a Marlin .22 and took out the motor on the antenna with a couple well-placed shots (which were covered by all the other shooting going on).

6. Our backyard was covered in weeds and I was supposed to clean it up without a lawn mower so I lit it on fire. I managed to keep it under control and had it out when the fire department showed up and bitched me out for not getting a burn permit first.

7. I was 22 and recovering from an injury and went out with friends. Some random guy at the restaurant we went to slapped his girlfriend and I stood up. He came up with a knife from the table and I disarmed him and in doing so broke both of his collarbones and dislocated his shoulder. I went total psycho on the guy and have regretted it ever since even though everyone thought I did the right thing.

That's all over 30 years ago. Damn. 🙁
 
It's kind of easy to guess the age of the posters in this thread. If they are 50 or over, the post includes either multiple felonies or mind blowing dumb moves that exposed them or others to serious, even potentially fatal bodily harm.

The posts from those under 30 run more along the lines of "I played in a pickup baseball game without any parental supervision present" vein.

It's true, though, and if you go back even further. My father (part of the Greatest Generation) had a favorite game they used to play in his neighborhood called duck the brick. Kinda like dodgeball.

My favorite dumb youth story was a from a guy I worked with. He was from Poland and he and a friend as teens got drunk and hijacked a streetcar in Moscow. Somehow instead of being sent to a gulag in Siberia he ended up being deported and eventually landed in the USA.
 
Don't remember my age at the time, but I got into the back seat of my dads limousine which he used in his mortuary business. I then proceeded to make *neat* burn marks everywhere with the cigarette lighter.
 
Lots of things with fire. For example:
1. Near the house I grew up in there was a gravel pit with a lot of large open concrete pipes. As kids my brother and I used to play in them. One day I got the idea that it would be fun to pour gasoline from a gas can inside one of the pipes and ignite it with a match. Thankfully I was smart enough not to be in or really near the pipe when I lit the match. Unfortunately - I was not smart enough to realize that the can I picked up out of my fathers garage was full of gas for a 2 cycle engine (mixture of gas an oil). God what a smokey mess.

2. When I was 8 or so my parents bought me a vehicle force voltron set for my birthday (in March). By July I was a bit bored with it, so my neighbor across the street, brother, and I duct taped half a brick of black cat fireworks around it and blew it up. Man my parents were pissed!

3. When I was 9 I learned that you should not heat a closed system. Because I was interested in chemistry my aunt bought me a cool Smithsonian chemistry set. After doing some of the introductory experiments I grew bored, so I proceeded to mix several of the chemicals that were labeled "do not mix" together in a large test tube. Being a children's chemistry set, nothing really exciting happened. But I did end up with a really dark purple liquid. Wondering whether heat would change the color, I corked the test tube containing the liquid and put it over a makeshift bunsen burner (i.e., a votive candle). A minute or so later the cork popped off quite excitingly, spraying purple liquid all over the kitchen ceiling of my parents home. When I visit my parents home now (some 30 years later), I can still see some of that stain.

Aside from doing stupid things with fire, there are two other truly careless things I remember doing as a child.

1. When playing with neighborhood kids across the street, I flung a 1'x1' piece of plywood like a frisbee without paying attention to where it would fly. It ended up hitting one of my brother's friends just under his right eye, opening a HUGE gash. A half inch up and his right eye would probably have been blinded.

2. I was a very curious child and was very interested in how things work. One summer, my parents (who were relatively poor) purchased a new television set. My father then went on vacation with my brother (I had to remain home for some reason with my mother). While my father was away and my mother was working in her home office, I rolled the new TV (which was on a cart) out onto our back deck and took the whole thing apart. After getting a good look at everything (and without wishing to be caught), I put everything back together again. Or . . . well . . . I tried to. Unfortunately the TV never turned on again. Even the TV repair man could not figure out what was wrong. Ultimately the TV had to be returned to the manufacturer for repair, which in that day and age took quite a long time.
 
disappoint said:
What? Lookit, how hard is this to understand? Yes, yes I said lookit. Blame Elaine form Seinfeld. Anywho...comedy time is over.

If you pull 30 amps your outlet's 15 amp breaker should trip and prevent the transformer's breaker with a much higher current rating feeding multiple homes from tripping. Is there some reason why the transformer and main are so much faster tripping than the outlet's fuse because if not I don't get it.
Click to expand...

The short circuit amperage is enough to trip them all the the smaller breaker just can't trip itself fast enough to stop it from going to the next breaker. This generally doesn't happen on 15 20 amp single poles(it can and does though), trip a double 30 theres a good chance you'll trip the main.

As I said before all breakers have a trip curve. They don't trip right at rating, you can pull say 10 amps over for a lot longer than you would think and pull a few amps over for 10 - 15 minutes. All manufacturers are different but they all work that way.
 
Remember a short circuit is drawing all the power the power system can give. Electricity travels at the speed of light. For that split second your pulling as much as the trans can give. You ever see the lights dim when you trip something... Bolted faults are the worst wire nut a circuit together and throw a switch you'll see and hear it.

This is just breakers, fuses trip a lot faster.

Edit. Breakers are mechanical they can't trip at the speed of light. edit 2. Electricity doesn't actually travel at the speed of light but it travels fast as shit, faster than anything mechanical that I know of.
 
Last edited:
Bart*Simpson said:
Wow...where to begin?

First, it's amazing that I was never arrested or prosecuted for any of the stupid criminal acts I committed when I was young. No idea why Fortune smiled on my stupidity so, so many times. That said, and in no particular order, to the list:

1. Joining the USMC at 17. It ended up being a great decision but I joined for the stupid reason of just wanting to get away from my parents. My DI made me realize that my parents weren't all that bad after all. It took him about three minutes to convince me of this.

2. A friend of mine in school was beaten by a Mexican gang who had an old school low rider. One day I'm in the high school parking lot and I bashed in the driver's side window and tossed in a lit highway flare. Those guys weren't so badass anymore riding the bus with everyone else.

3. Another idiot attacked me when I was 15. Another lit highway flare burned his house to the ground. (I had a thing for highway flares!)

4. I jumped feet-first off of the top of the old bridge at Meiss Road on the Cosumnes River. This was about 75 feet above the water which was itself about ten feet deep. My feet stuck in the mud and I nearly drowned trying to get out. Never did that one again.

5. A neighbor nearby put up a ham radio mast around 1979 and every time he'd talk we'd hear it on our TV. All the time. He didn't care when the neighbors complained. So New Year's one year I had a Marlin .22 and took out the motor on the antenna with a couple well-placed shots (which were covered by all the other shooting going on).

6. Our backyard was covered in weeds and I was supposed to clean it up without a lawn mower so I lit it on fire. I managed to keep it under control and had it out when the fire department showed up and bitched me out for not getting a burn permit first.

7. I was 22 and recovering from an injury and went out with friends. Some random guy at the restaurant we went to slapped his girlfriend and I stood up. He came up with a knife from the table and I disarmed him and in doing so broke both of his collarbones and dislocated his shoulder. I went total psycho on the guy and have regretted it ever since even though everyone thought I did the right thing.

That's all over 30 years ago. Damn. 🙁
Click to expand...

Damn, you're a pyromaniac.
 
Hmm...

1) My brother and I had one of those bb/pellet guns. One day, I was playing around with it while my parents were out. I shot a hole in the TV screen. My dad came back and whipped my ass!

2) Found discarded ammo and preceded to hit the end with a rock.
3) Went into my friend's abandoned house.I thought it was fun. The cops didn't.
 
I remember back when I was young building my first Desktop... I bought a Socket A Sempron as my processor. Shoulda got a 939 Athlon 64...

But it had 5 eggs. 🙁
 
When I was in middle school I lived in an apartment that had a creek behind it and on the other side of the creek was a shopping center. There was an El Pollo directly across from my building with a drive through and me and my friends would stand by the wall and wait for cars(we could hear the people ordering at the speaker) and throw rocks when they were sitting at the window waiting for their food. Since there was a big wall nobody could tell we were there so they didn't know what was hitting their cars. Some of them thought something fell off the roof, but eventually a guy driving a big truck saw the rocks and started yelling at us and saying he was going to kick our asses. One of the people working there got on top of the wall and said she was going to call the cops and tell them what we look like so we ran. They didn't know what apartment we lived in so nothing happened to us and we started doing again a couple of days later.
 
Bashed 60+ mail boxes in one night with some friends. Another group of kids got 30 more. Mail was completely messed up the following Monday. There was a huge investigation and one of the guys with us ended up ratting. We were all underage and didn't understand it was a huge felony issue. My best friend's dad is a prominent lawyer in the town and was a deputy so he got us out of it. Only had to do a few hours of community service. 🙂

All of us have great jobs now with some having families. One an officer in the Navy, one a lawyer, I'm in real estate, etc. Kids do stupid things, but leniency is often needed. Sadly, we throw the book at kids these days and ruin their lives.
 
olds said:
Not the worst but that would require to admitting to what may be criminal activity..

I always wore button fly 501s.

I put a firecracker between the buttons of the trousers with the tip and fuse pointing out. I was going to show off by lighting the fuse and then putting it out with my fingertips.

I lit in and as I reached down to snuff it out I accidently knocked it all the way in. I panicked and the only thing I could think to do was quickly and fiercely hammerfist my crotch to put it out. I succeeded in putting it out. I succeeded in beating the crap out of my groin and falling, doubled over in pain.

My brothers still laugh about it today and it was about 44 years ago.
Click to expand...
Do you still have balls or just a burnt out calcified groin Area?
 
man, you guys make me glad i wasn't your parents!

MRW when reading most of your posts:

imgur_9CUtI.gif
 
Subyman said:
Bashed 60+ mail boxes in one night with some friends. Another group of kids got 30 more. Mail was completely messed up the following Monday. There was a huge investigation and one of the guys with us ended up ratting. We were all underage and didn't understand it was a huge felony issue. My best friend's dad is a prominent lawyer in the town and was a deputy so he got us out of it. Only had to do a few hours of community service. 🙂

All of us have great jobs now with some having families. One an officer in the Navy, one a lawyer, I'm in real estate, etc. Kids do stupid things, but leniency is often needed. Sadly, we throw the book at kids these days and ruin their lives.
Click to expand...

One of my good friends in high school had problems with kids always knocking his mailbox over.

After his dad had enough he mounted the mailbox on a steel I-beam and sunk it in 3 ft of concrete.

They found a bent aluminum bat at the end of their driveway a few days later. 😀
 
Oh man....where to begin lol

1. I was home all alone and decided to see if I could pull myself up with a rope I had thrown over a high branch. I attached the loop on the other end of the rope to my foot. I pulled, my foot went forward, not up like I thought it would.........followed by the rest of my body. I then became upside-down rather quickly, and managed to bash the back of my head into a railroad tie we had for the driveway edge. Man, I had BAD headaches for like 2 weeks after....

2. There was a rather large abandoned building close to where I lived. It was like a 2 story building with 4 or 5 large rooms on each floor separated by swinging doors. Anyhow, the local newspaper company, for whatever reason, had tossed a HUGE amount of old bundled up newspapers in one of the rooms on the first/ground floor. I mean, this pile was up to the ceiling (like at least 9 feet). My friend and I decided it would be cool to 'hollow out' the center of newspaper mountain and have like a fort or something. We found one of those round cardboard barrel things to use an an entrance tunnel, and in no time (a day lol) had a nice area in the center hollowed out. I think the papers were still overhead, creating a complete 'cave' of sorts lol. Anyhow, a short time later we both hear this buzzing noise. We crawl out thru the carboard tunnel thing and see a shit-ton of yellowjackets flying up towards the top of the pile. Apparently they had built a nest or something in all those papers. Being kids, we threw stuff at them. I can remember running like hell with yellowjackets stinging me left and right......good times.........good times....

3. When I was in middle/high school, I had a 1981 CR80R. Man, that thing would go like a bat outta hell. One day my friends and I decided to see how fast it could go. So, one of my friends had a Ford Pinto (lol), and he and my other friend hopped in there, and I got on my bike. We both proceeded to go flying down the local road. Faster......faster..........I think my friend said he was approaching 60mph and I was slowly....ever so slowly..... passing him......6th gear....WOT. On a blind corner. Well, wouldn't you know it...a car decided to come around the corner at the same time. Thank God for my youthful reflexes. I slammed on my brakes and got behind the Pinto just in time to see the other car whizzing by. Turned out it was my friend's neighbor...who got a good laugh out of it.

4. I used to skip school (high school) quite a bit. One day, I thought 'fuck it, I'm not goin'. So, after lolligagging around most of the day, I suddenly remembered the woman my dad was seeing was supposed to pick me up at the school 'cause I had to go to the dentist or something. OH SHIT! I thought. What to do...what to do........cmon blah-toe THINK! A-HA! I'll just hop on my CR80, skidaddle down to the high school, find someone to take my bike home, and be there to be picked up. I dont know what the hell I was thinking, but I got on, took all the back roads I could as far as I could. But eventually I had to take a 'main road' to get to the school. So, get on the road, go like hell down the road, and up to the high school, just when the busses were pulling in to pick up the kids. I look around and see a friend of mine. He agrees to take my bike home for me, and I got picked up like nothing happened. Evidently, someone called the cops about a 'kid riding his dirt bike on the highway', but nothing ever came of it. My friend had parked my bike on the back porch (ie out of sight) so the cops didn't see it.

5. Made home-made smoke bombs out of black powder and sulfur. We used practice golf balls (the hollowed out light plastic ones). Almost burned down a field on that one

6. Me and the neighbor kid went up into the woods. One of us ( I cant remember who) had a 22 shell. We put it on an old stump, grabbed a rock, and started pounding on it. I guess we were trying to remove the bullet or something. Of course, it goes KA-BOOM! My ears were ringing after that for quite a while. I remember running thru the woods to home not being able to hear a thing.

7. One of our neighbors had a pond that was pretty secluded. We'd go up there and shoot the salamanders that liked to float on the surface. Well, one day we decided to bring out 22's instead lol. After shooting for a little bit, my friend yelled 'here he comes!' meaning the owner of said pond. We ran for my house, locked the door and closed the curtains. He came looking around, yelled a couple things, but that was it.

8. In my old hometown there is a State Hospital. Once in a while, a few of us would venture down into the tunnels that connected all the buildings together. At night of course. We'd either sneak in thru the main building, or go into one of the entrances that were scattered across the grounds. They looked like round concrete 'huts' with just a door on them. Sometimes they were either unlocked or didn't close all the way. Anyhow, it was awful creepy down there. You're at one end of the tunnel, and there's just light bulbs every 50 feet or so for light. And these things were long. One time we were walking along and noticed a dude (patient I'm guessing) in a wheelchair....... just kind of hanging out there......in the tunnel......at night. WTF? No clue how he got there. We just kind of walked past him like 'no big deal' lol.

9. There was also a country club right close the building mentioned in #2. There was a big field that bordered it. We'd ride our motorcycles in the field all the time, racing traffic and whatnot. Anyhow, one day we noticed there was a whole bunch of soda at one of the 'resting huts' or whatever they're called. I think they were having some sort of a tournament. So my buddy and I start loading up our bikes with all the soda we can handle. After a couple minutes of this, my friend looks up and says 'oh shit!'. I look up. Here comes one of the course employees in his golf cart, getting closer and madder looking every second lol. He knows we're up to no good, and he's determined to get us. I hop on my CR80, one kick and I'm started and outa there. My poor friend had a Honda Trail 90. Kinda looks like a moped lmao. Anyhow, he has all this soda strapped onto the rack, so it's obvious what he's doing. He gets on his bike and kicks.......and kicks........and kicks......and kicks. The sonofabitch wont start! They guy is getting closer and closer. My friend is panicking by now, kicking like a madman. Finally he gets his bike started and rides off.......

OK, so maybe these aren't stupid things...but I sure remember them 🙂
 
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