Childhood Should Have Killed Us - OK, Boomer Edition

[Shadow]

They were running new wires on the towers. The wires stretching from tower to tower would be down to the ground before pulling them tight. The day before seventh grade three friends grabbed the cables and were pulled up to the top. The two guys made it over to the tower, Barbara didn't. We were supposed to be in the same class the next day.

[Progatron]

When I was 8, I used to "bunk", as we called it, the school bus. Your just hang onto the back bumper and ski along your feet. The bus driver would hit the brakes and chase us off the bus. Fun but dangerous times.

We always called that shagging. I know that has an entirely different meaning in the U.K.!

[moecurlythanu]

OMG, I've read many posts here that sound EXACTLY word for word like the crazy stuff I did as a kid. .

Yep.

Anyone else do the streaking thing? We lived on a country road and would run in front of car's headlights in the buff. God only knows what they thought.

Or a food fight in the high school lunchroom? It ended up involving the whole room, with all students and the walls covered in food. Don't recall what was served that day.

Riding in the bed of a pickup loaded with water balloons and bombing the students and faculty in the high school parking lot. Barney Fife and his boys were looking for the chartreuse green pickup that could probably be seen from space, but never did catch us. We did get blown in by somebody and wound up in the principal's office. They weren't going to let us graduate, but it was favorably resolved somehow.

Not life threatening stuff, but fun mischief.

[rcarlberg]

Anyone else do the streaking thing? We lived on a country road and would run in front of car's headlights.

Yeah. Uh, no.

[moecurlythanu]

Yeah. Uh, no.

Probably for the best.

[The Dark Elf]

It wasn't just the crazy things we used to do that could kill you. I don't know if any of you ever got a chemistry set for Christmas, but I remember my kit actually contained a vial of mercury. You would spill some on the table or in the palm of your hand and then try picking it up (which you couldn't, which made it even more fun trying).

[Dave (in MA)]

When I was 8, I used to "bunk", as we called it, the school bus. Your just hang onto the back bumper and ski along your feet. The bus driver would hit the brakes and chase us off the bus. Fun but dangerous times.

Presumably when it had snowed? Around here we called that skid-hopping.

[3LockBox]

Wow, lots of potential Darwin Award finalists in this thread

Of course we have child safety caps, Mr Yuk stickers and lead-free paint to thank for hours and hours of 'fail' videos on YouTube in modern times.

Probably a good thing we didn't have pocket-sized video cameras back in the day.

[Garyhead]

My oldest brother found what he thought was just a piece of metal in a box of stuff that was left behind in the workshop of the dairy farm my family bought back in the early '70s. He put it in a vice and was cutting it with a hacksaw when it exploded. Turns out it was a blasting cap which took a chunk out of his thumb and blew the end of his index finger off.

Holy Crap! I just remembered the Public Service Announcements on TV about the dangers of Blasting Caps! Like Blasting Caps were all over the place....(and had me wondering how I could get my hands on them!) I figured they were sold in Hardware Stores in rural areas.....wasn't there a time you could buy dynamite in country stores?

[The Dark Elf]

Making car models with regular ol' over-the-counter model glue (Testor's, Ducco, Revell) turned into a psychedelic experience if you breathed in the fumes too long; in fact "glue-sniffing" became a thing for awhile as a cheap high (sort of like paint huffing). I don't think it was until the early 70s when they finally started making non-toxic model glue (smelled like oranges)

[JKL2000]

We always called that shagging. I know that has an entirely different meaning in the U.K.!

We called it Skitching.

[walt]

For a while my father had a subscription to Playboy magazine(why my mom tolerated it is still beyond me).My (older) brother and i were intrigued by it and tried to sneak a peek at it,verboten to us though it was.One day when my parents were outside gardening, i heard the sound of mail being shoved through the mail slot.There it was!, the new issue of Playboy, and i wanted to read it.My brother heard the sound, too, but i got there just before him.I grabbed the magazine and ran, my brother, hot on my heels.He chased me around the house, intent on grabbing it away from me.

I scurried into the bathroom, slammed the door shut, right on my brothers thumb, as he stuck his hand in.He screamed in pain, blood spurted from his thumb.I thought i had severed it.Parents came, horrified,took him to the emergency room.He was fine.Just a nasty scar that he still shows me every time we meet.

Dad cancelled his Playboy subscription.

My brother liked to shoot paper clips at me, powered by rubber bands.He didn't often hit me, but it hurt when it did.My brother and i once had a tug of war with a sharp knife, i had the sharp end;still have a nice scar on my finger.

[Shadow]

My brother liked to shoot paper clips at me, powered by rubber bands.He didn't often hit me, but it hurt when it did.My brother and i once had a tug of war with a sharp knife, i had the sharp end;still have a nice scar on my finger.

We used to do that in fifth grade. I got hit once on the lower left eyelid, I was lucky. Then I think I got him in the nuts.

[NogbadTheBad]

Loads of stupid stuff as a kid, we were thrown out and had to amuse ourselves until it got dark, nearby building sites were great places to play. Had friends who specialized in making bombs.

[Plasmatopia]

Holy Crap! I just remembered the Public Service Announcements on TV about the dangers of Blasting Caps! Like Blasting Caps were all over the place....(and had me wondering how I could get my hands on them!) I figured they were sold in Hardware Stores in rural areas.....wasn't there a time you could buy dynamite in country stores?

Hmmm....no idea about the dynamite. I was probably only about 5 years old when all this was going on.

Someone mentioned chemistry sets. I never had one with mercury (probably for the best, lol), but I spent hours messing around with the one we had and also augmenting it with various substances I found around the house. I'm sure that was all harmless, haha. Probably the worst thing that happened was heating something up in a test tube and ending up burning myself and trying to hide the fact that I hurt myself from my mother.

Along those same lines, I was at a friends house and we were out riding snow machines. We were supposed to stick close to their property, but of course we ended up in a huge field a couple miles away. This field had two levels and we were having fun going from the lower level, up a 15-foot embankment to the higher level and catching some air in the process. But of course something went wrong and the snow machine tipped to one side while airborne I fell off. Messed up my shoulder. I'm not sure going to a doctor would have mattered, but I never told my mother so I wouldn't get in trouble. It still gives me trouble sometimes.

[Plasmatopia]

Dad cancelled his Playboy subscription.

Damn. There are scars and then there are freakin' scars.

[Plasmatopia]

This was well after childhood when we should've known better, but sometime in my 20s my fireworks buddies and I got together to have a fireworks "war" somewhere on a remote Vermont hillside. We had roman candles, some of those things with little parachutes that would light up the whole area, and exploding bottle rockets that we shot out of empty roman candle tubes. We had some pretty killer 3:00 AM roman candle duels down in the golf course in town, but this was kicking it up a notch (at least we were all wearing safety glasses). It was all fun and games until I was hit in the lip with a bottle rocket. It bounced off and exploded on the ground. I got a nasty fat lip. But the part that scared me was that I had my mouth open at the time. A little higher and maybe it would have exploded in my mouth. I decided to sit the rest of the battle out.

[Poisoned Youth]

I walked to kindergarten fairly regularly when I was 4 either with my 7 year old brother or usually with the 4 year old girl down the street, and/or her 5 year old brother, in Boston about 1/2 mi. away from home, and I'd sometimes walk home alone.

Contrast that to today. One of the bus stops in the morning is at the end of our block about 100 feet away that's for K-5 kids. The vast majority are accompanied at the bus stop by the parent. If it falls below 50 degrees, some of the parents chauffeur their kids in the car. Most of the homes are within 2 blocks of the stop.

[Progatron]

Contrast that to today. One of the bus stops in the morning is at the end of our block about 100 feet away that's for K-5 kids. The vast majority are accompanied at the bus stop by the parent. If it falls below 50 degrees, some of the parents chauffeur their kids in the car. Most of the homes are within 2 blocks of the stop.

Yep, this is what I see as the norm around here now. It's also hard to get a taxi around 8-9 am on weekdays, and if you ask any of the cab drivers why, they'll tell you they're on 'school runs'. I never set foot in a taxi until I was about 20 years old, LOL!

Walking to and from school with various friends was one of the healthy parts of growing up, IMO. And there were plenty of times I walked home alone too, even as a young child.

[rcarlberg]

There it was!, the new issue of Playboy, and i wanted to read it.

Liar.

We too used to make slingshots out of rubber bands and straightened-out paper clips. You could zing those suckers into a sheetrock wall -- and they'd stick. We also made blowguns out of straws, stick pins, with little paper tails. They'd stick in your clothing.

Sometimes deeper, if you blew hard enough.

[markwoll]

We would stick a pin through a pencil eraser with some sort of fins made of paper and toss them around. Usually not each other.
Middle school shop class aligned with the tv show Kung Fu. "throwing stars" were all the rage. Ceiling tiles were decorated throughout the school with sheet metal.
And then there were the ketchup dipped straw wrappers that decorated the ceilings in the lunch room.
Any of these various 'decorations' could fall at random, adding to the general angst of middle school.

[nosebone]

We had a smoking section in our high school for my sophomore year.

[Lopez]

We also made blowguns out of straws, stick pins, with little paper tails. They'd stick in your clothing.

Sometimes deeper, if you blew hard enough.

My brother Nick would do that, but once instead of blowing out, he drew a breath in first and aspirated the pin. He had to got to the hospital to have the pin removed from his trachea. Same kid shoved a bean up his nose years earlier. He's a doctor himself today.

[progmatist]

We had a smoking section in our high school for my sophomore year.

My high school was a closed campus, so there was a "smoking hole" in a far off corner of the campus. It was tolerated, but not sanctioned.

[Steve F.]

We had a smoking section in our high school for my sophomore year.

We had a cigarette AND dope smoking section in our high school which was barely tolerated but it was left alone. Which is sort of amazing.

It's the only place in the school where I ever saw my schoolmate, Joan Larkin, later to become Joan Jett. The below is her sophmore photo at Wheaton High School. Nice '75 era 'do, Joan!

joan-jett-soph-photo1.jpg