Stupid Stuff We Did As Kids thread

[spikechiquet]

My buddy cracked his back in 7th grade and had to wear a brace. After he got out of it, we used it as BB-gun armor. Yes, we would take turns wearing it while the other shot a BB gun at the guy wearing it.

Had about a 15/20-ft cliff in my backyard that was littered with jagged rocks. In the winter we would sled off it and hope we didn't get impaled.

I knew where my grandpa kept his Marlbolo Reds and matches. Would take a pack and go in the woods to smoke them. Accidentally started a fire and had to use my jean jacket and Huffy bike tires to put it out. Had burns all over both the jacket and the tires. I could have easily taken out the whole forest.

Those are the most traumatic moments I recall offhand.

 

[spikechiquet]

My three brothers and I spent an inordinate amount of time recreating pro wrestling matches to see if the moves/holds really hurt or not.

Among our findings: The figure-four doesn't really hurt. The flying elbow off the couch does.

Oh, you didn't do the figure four right then. Done properly, it can rip some ACLs

 

[Killick]

I never did this. ... but I remember other kids shooting roman candles at each other.

Guilty. I still have two wounds from our "wars." One, a scar on my neck in which a rocket wound its way from about 40 feet away and nailed me in the neck. I can still see that thing corkscrewing in while I stood frozen like a deer in headlights.

Second one is a two-inch burn scar on my stomach. Was fashioning a "gun," basically a pipe like a bazooka to direct my shot. I didn't make the stopper on the back end thick enough, so when I test-fired it the first time, all the propellant was directed right into me.

 

[bumpy mcgee]

I remember playing a version of 'Kill the man with the ball.' Basically one guy has a basketball at the top of the key, everyone else was in the lane waiting for him and he had to try get to ge bucket and score with everyone allowed to do whatever to stop him. On blacktop.

 

[justgladtobehere]

Friends and I would sit on our skateboards and ride down roads making turns and blowing through stop signs. It was on quiet suburban streets, but if a car did come by we would have been forked.

I used to melt the wheels on these toy cars I had. I would stuff the spent matches in the couch.

 

[Roscablo]

We just played tackle without pads or helmets. That seems pretty damn stupid in retrospect.

We played just about every damn day in front of the neighborhood middle school. It was a perfect field for us. Good width and length. We broke one of my best friend's collar bones one day. His mom worked at the school and she was still there, so we just went in and turned him over so he could go get it taken care of. He was in a lot of pain, but we all thought it was sort of funny. It didn't stop the games either.

 

[Roscablo]

One of the absolute dumbest things I did was we were all hanging out one night, driving age, and there were too many of us to fit into my buddy's freaking Pinto station wagon. We weren't going far and on neighborhood streets, so I rode on the bumper! Was standing up, holding onto the rack thing on the top. I was jacking around and turned to the side of the car to wave inside, just as my friend decided to fly around a corner. I took flight. He saw that I did and slammed on the breaks. I can still see how close that bumper came to hitting my head when he stopped. I was a bloody mess but nothing broken or otherwise off. I am lucky I didn't die.

 

[Batman]

We didn't have a lot of open green space in my neighborhood, so we played football on the blacktop. There were a few dead end streets in the area that were perfect for it.
It was two-hand touch, not tackle. We weren't complete idiots. But we would still occasionally trip or slip and get scraped up pretty bad. One time we were playing on a street that had a rose bush or something close to the curb and a kid ran straight into it trying to catch a pass. He got torn up pretty bad.

In high school we played dodgeball with racquetballs and racquets. It was supposed to be a racquetball unit in gym class. They pulled out the wooden partitions that divided the gym into three sections, so at any given time two of the three sections were out of the teacher's view. I don't remember how exactly it started. Probably somebody horsing around and sending a ball someone else's way. But it didn't take long for it to devolve into full-on, 45-minute, full-court wars. There were 6 or 8 of us in that part of the gym and we'd divide into teams, then play it like a regular dodgeball game. It was, hands down, one of the funnest times I've ever had in gym class.
Turns out, though, that it's really hard to hit somebody with a racquetball, which is probably a good thing. We spent most of the time just sending them each other's way. I almost drilled a guy right between the eyes once. The shot went about a foot over his head and might have done serious damage if it had connected. I got hit in the leg a couple of times and caught one ricochet behind the ear. The latter was not very pleasant. My ear was ringing for about an hour afterward.

 

[Spartan Squad]

My three brothers and I spent an inordinate amount of time recreating pro wrestling matches to see if the moves/holds really hurt or not.

Among our findings: The figure-four doesn't really hurt. The flying elbow off the couch does.

The Lion Tamer hurt.

The Pedigree could chip your friend's tooth if not done right. I didn't do it right.

 

[Spartan Squad]

The best one we did was put a bunch of pictures of naked men and naked trans people in my buddy's locker. That one took a while to plan because we had to get his locker combination plus a patsy to actually buy some magazines to get us the pictures. We got everything in place and his reaction was priceless. We all must have laughed for 10 straight minutes. Then my English teacher walked by, looked in his locker , looked at us just wetting ourselves laughing and walked away.

 

[spikechiquet]

21st birthday ... walked to the end of this while drunk. SUPER dumb (and illegal)

And yes ... that is open water for freight ships depth to fall into, into a very cold Lake Superior.
I was a dipshirt.

 

[Roscablo]

We didn't have a lot of open green space in my neighborhood, so we played football on the blacktop. There were a few dead end streets in the area that were perfect for it.
It was two-hand touch, not tackle. We weren't complete idiots. But we would still occasionally trip or slip and get scraped up pretty bad. One time we were playing on a street that had a rose bush or something close to the curb and a kid ran straight into it trying to catch a pass. He got torn up pretty bad.

In high school we played dodgeball with racquetballs and racquets. It was supposed to be a racquetball unit in gym class. They pulled out the wooden partitions that divided the gym into three sections, so at any given time two of the three sections were out of the teacher's view. I don't remember how exactly it started. Probably somebody horsing around and sending a ball someone else's way. But it didn't take long for it to devolve into full-on, 45-minute, full-court wars. There were 6 or 8 of us in that part of the gym and we'd divide into teams, then play it like a regular dodgeball game. It was, hands down, one of the funnest times I've ever had in gym class.
Turns out, though, that it's really hard to hit somebody with a racquetball, which is probably a good thing. We spent most of the time just sending them each other's way. I almost drilled a guy right between the eyes once. The shot went about a foot over his head and might have done serious damage if it had connected. I got hit in the leg a couple of times and caught one ricochet behind the ear. The latter was not very pleasant. My ear was ringing for about an hour afterward.

My high school gym had a racquetball court. It was around the corner in kind of a separate area from the main basketball floor. So you couldn't see it unless you were in that area. It wasn't just a racquetball court, they'd put up stuff like table tennis there too. The racquetball court was like any racquetball court, closed off, with a door, etc. Actual racquetball never happened in there. We did stuff like this, although probably not as organized. I can only imagine the overall stuff that went on in there, being so out of sight, out of mind. I wonder if it still exists. Not like racquetball was a huge thing even then (and funny enough, as an adult I play racquetball!).