Stupid Stuff We Did As Kids thread

My brother, who is five years older than me, loved to build things from scratch. This is “Jabber Wacky,” a go-cart that did not have brakes but did have steering - at least this latest iteration did, from around 1982. Wheels were from an old baby carriage and my father’s golf pull cart. That’s me on the “trailer” with an annoyed face because I knew it wouldn’t go well. Notice we aren’t wearing helmets - but apparently my father didn’t mind, because he took the picture.

Our road slopes down past our house (in the background) so there was no problem getting up to speed quick. Surprisingly, I only had one instance of getting road rash.

 

The DL stories reminded me of what happened the day after I got mine.

I over-corrected after nearly missing the garage entrance at the L&C Tower and took out a ticket spitter.

 

That’s somewhat like Cool Hand Luke, except you used your car instead of a pipe cutter.

 

I mean ... it was July though. So I mighta been OK. Water temp yesterday though was 42! LOL

 

Ha! I really need to see that movie. The late Niklas Lidstrom was compared to him based on his behavior at the local adoption center.

 

The 1993 Storm of the Century hit us my senior year of high school in Upstate New York. With school out for a week and basically nothing open on account of the four feet of snow, we started going to empty parking lots and pulling each other in sleds attached to the bumper of my buddy's beater VW Rabbit (a surprisingly good car in the snow). My turn almost ended horribly when my pal took a turn that caused me to nearly get pulled under the car. I had to kick off one of the rear wheels to avoid it.

Pretty sure we continued on as if nothing had happened, tho.

 

From about age 6-14, I spent hundreds of hours a year on my bike: be it BMX, road or mountain. Never once did I wear a helmet. It was the 1980s and nobody wore them, but looking back, it's a miracle I'm not dead or dealing with some kind of brain damage.

 

Yo, Corky, dat ain't 94th Street!

 

Maybe the stupidest thing I did as a kid was my two-week fascination with fire, which ended about as abruptly as you can imagine. I was maybe 14, had access to gasoline from mowing lawns, so I started by pouring just a little on the concrete garage floor and flicking a match on it. Just a little flame that flickered for a minute, then it died off. Harmless fun, right? Smelled cool, too!

The permanent end to my fascination with fire ended a few days later when I dumped a little gas on a few sticks out in the backyard and lit them up. Wasn't much of a blaze, so I got the bright idea to add a little more gas. And by "bright idea to add a little more gas," I mean I poured it directly from the can onto the burning pile.

That led to an immediate science refresher on how fast an open flame can travel up a stream of gasoline and into a gas can. It took only a second, the same second in which I realized I was about to Go Die in a Fire, but somehow I had the presence of mind to fling that gas can up and away, which was a damn good idea, because the next second was when the gas inside the can turned everything into a big-ass fireball, not six feet away from my face.

No explosion, just a fireball of a gas can, and I grabbed a shovel and used it to turn the gas can upside-down so the open mouth was forced into the ground, which killed the fire eventually. But not before I tilted the can a couple times to check, and the flames shot out again both times. Finally, though, I kept the can sealed off against the ground, and my epic little disaster was over. All in the space of about two minutes, though all the scary fireball shit happened in the first 20 seconds.

Somehow I didn't catch fire and die that day, or was left with a horribly scarred face like a (female) classmate who did something similar when her family was burning leaves, and I never played with fire again. Somehow didn't get caught, either, since I muddied up the crime scene, buried the ruined gas can deep down in our curbside garbage can in the dark of night, and replaced it with a new can a day later. The fear of getting caught having done something so stupid and dangerous only added to the trauma.

What a disaster. And what luck fate handed me that day.
Nine out of 10 times, that fireball probably lights me up, too.
And, of course, I can still replay that episode in my head to this day.

 

Wrecked my first car four weeks after I got my license.

Wrecked my mother's car 10 months later.

Got ticketed doing 76 in a 40 seven months after that and lost my license for 15 days.

Why these people continued allowing me behind the wheel is beyond me.

Now I drive like a senior citizen because I like seeing how high I can get the MPG digital readout.

 

My wife just told our 14-year-old niece this story over the weekend:

When I was 17, I rear-ended a pickup truck, that was driven by an off-duty cop, while I was en route to a bar where my friend’s brother’s band was playing and was notorious for letting underage kids in.

My hood went up under the back of his truck and split in two and I couldn’t get it latched again. So I tied it down with some athletic tape I had in the trunk. Then, I decided I was still going to the bar.

I ended up hitching a ride with someone else and left my torn-up car in the parking lot overnight. The cops shut down the bar permanently a few weeks later, and I swear to this day it was all my fault.

 

I'm curious what your brother grew up to do for a living?

I admire guys who can make, fix and build things. Did he end up putting such skills/interests to work for him?