Stupid Stuff We Did As Kids thread

I got my license suspended on the day I got it.

I passed the test, got my permit stamped, then called my girlfriend, told her the news and said I’d pick her up to take a spin.

Then I tried to show off by driving really, really fast, and got pulled over doing 61 in a 25-mph zone. Somehow, this did not impress my girlfriend at all.

And, at the time, doubling the speed limit was an automatic 15-day suspension. The cop confiscated my stamped permit and escorted us home.

 

I got my drivers' license a day or two after my 16th birthday.

That night, I went to a kegger out in the outskirts of Starrville. At the time, the drinking age was 18, and in actual practice it was about 12 1/2 -- I went to a bar with my friends and got drunk on beer listening to Bachman-Turner Overdrive when I was 14 years old.
Anyway I was nicely buzzed, and driving home at a nice smooth 25 miles an hour, on a 65-mph divided highway.

The cop pulled me over and I figured my license was gone forever. All through drivers' ed, the teachers had absolutely harped on the topic, "if you get pulled over for ANY moving violation your first year of driving, your license can be suspended until you're 21." Which I guess was theoretically true, but in reality was very very rare.

Anyway the cop was there, demanding to see license and proof of insurance. He looked at the paper license, with its issue date of that day. "Just got your license, eh?" I guess I stammered out some answers which didn't sound too schnockered, then he said, "how far away do you live?"
"About a mile," I answered, accurately.
"Okay," he said. "Go there, and stay there."
I did. Drove the entire distance at a nice easy 5 mph below the limit.
In my rearview mirror, I saw Mr. City Policeman cruising about 200 yards behind me.

In the 48 years since, I've been pulled over, I believe, four or five times.

 

I had a friend that put the Camel Clutch on me a few times. If I got on my knees, it wasn’t so bad, but if my legs were down and he pulled back, it hurt like hell.

 

In college, we would play Wallyball, which was volleyball in the racquetball court. There were buckles to pull out on the walls to tie the net to.

The way the courts were set up, someone could go up some stairs to a hallway, where they could walk through and look down on everyone playing. There was no plexiglass. Just some metal railings and it was open air..

So occasionally, someone on our court would hit the ball too high, and it would fly up and out of the racquetball court and up on the corridor. And for some reason, the stairs and the hallway was locked, meaning the ball was stuck up on the hallway.

Rather than going to get someone to unlock the hallway door, whoever hit the ball over would have to climb the wall to the hallway to retrieve the ball. They’d stand on the top of the little door to the court, use their hands to push themselves onto a narrow ledge halfway up the wall, then reach for the railings and climb up into the hallway.

Once they did that, they’d throw the ball down, and try to climb back down. Meanwhile, in a sign of our great intelligence, people would start playing dodgeball and try to drill the poor guy climbing down from 15 feet high. It’s a miracle nobody got hurt.

As for me, I hit the ball up high twice and got lucky both times. One time hit the top railing of the hallway and bounced back down to us. The other time, the ball flew all the way over the hallway and into the racquetball court opposite from us. Luckily, that court wasn’t locked.

 

Freshman year at Alabama. After the first hard rain of the fall, our dorm adjourned to the quad at midnight for Bog Bowl. Theoretically it was two hand touch but in that much mud gravity took over and you went where you went. No passing, so every play was basically option football. After about an hour someone laid out horizontally like Superman in flight to stop the man turning the sideline corner. Ball carrier fell straight back on his neck, maybe a foot from the sidewalk. That was the end of Bog Bowl.

 

It snows a lot in my hometown. When it snowed, and before the side streets were plowed, cars would pack down the snow so it was nice and smooth. We'd grab ahold of a car's rear bumper, let it pull us, and slide along on the bottoms of our shoes. We called it pogeying. Years later I call it stupid.

Also drove far too often after drinking far too much. Years later I call that insanely stupid.

 

There was a time when my buddys and I measured the length of a car trip in sixpacks. "Yeah, its about a sixer from home to San Antone."

 

Same thing in North Nowhere. Three beers to Fargo, two to Dickinson, two to my roomie's lake cabin up by Minot, 3-4 to the north unit of the Badlands.

 

About 25 years ago I had a crazy girlfriend who got pulled over for DUI after a work function. Her mom was a person of local note.
I am watching baseball around 10 p.m. and get a call from a state trooper (!!) asking me to come and get her. No citation given, no questions asked.

 

We did this my college dorm. Two sides armed with tennis balls and racquetball racquets squared off from the ends of the long dorm hallway, and the battle was on. Tennis balls flying hard and fast in both directions, and it was so fucking fun. Especially when someone who was studying inside his room would hear the commotion in the hallway, stick his head out to see what the noise was, and WHAM he takes a tennis ball to the noggin. Oh, man, great times. Great times.

We also did the same with Frisbees. We called it Killer Frisbee, and it was good, clean, brutal fun.

Fourth Floor South Hall kicked ass!

 

I'll bet your parents were even less impressed than your girlfriend.

 

Kid division: When I was nine, we used to follow the "Skeeter Trucks" with paper bags over our heads while screaming, Stop killing nature!" Some of us didn't bother with eyeholes because it would interfere with our brilliant protest art and slogans. It's doubtful Bossier Parrish paid those drivers enough to put up with baby activists screaming at them.

Tweener Division: Someone took me and my Junior High bestie to see The Buddy Holly Story. I think we were hoping for Godspell at the arthouse near Tech because Godspell and Victor Garber was our sekrit Musical Theatre Boyfriend (I know...I know...) Tee had just educated me about the traditio0nal antipathy between Texans and Oklahomans. We went very, very early and soon found out why. People loved to talk about how they knew the Holleys, how they went to school with Charlie Holley, how they filled in as a Cricket, almost was a Cricket, and so on. At a quiet moment in the movie , I turned to Tee and said, "I thought he was from Oklahoma." So many noise complaints and that was the only thing I said.