Messed up stuff we did as kids

Late winter or early spring, after we got tired of corncob fights, we went on to using horseweed stalks for spear throwing fights. All the better if there was a clump of dirt attached to the root, it gave the stalk more distance and hurt a lot worse if you were hit. It's a wonder we all came out without serious injuries.
 

A neighbor had an old WWII era jeep with tire chains on all four tires that he let us play with in the timbers. We used it for hill climbing the sides of the gullies there. We would set 3 to 4 of us on the front of the hood to keep from flipping over backwards on the really steep hills. Even then the front wheels would sometimes come up. Lucky none of us bailed off at that time.
 

As young adults that we were (merely kids) we had the passion of digging for old bottles. We sought out the local dumps and this one dump was giving us shards of Beaver sealers which was the holy grail of the preserve jars in collecting bottles. Well it was off to our digging spot, the permission granted from mom and the words of warning "Don't be taking my new garden scratcher-or else!" One look-two shrugs of the shoulders my brother and me snatched up the new scratcher along with the other tools of digging. 2 long handled probes, shovel, long handled scratcher, short handled ones, and this new mid length scratcher just waiting to be used. All tied up on the bikes, potato sack for the bounty to be dug, and off we went.
Now this dump was over the side of a road, we had two short tunnels of 6'+ft deep into the bank, each being of a different level. I was on my hands and knees in the lower tunnel when a car rumbled down the road above us, that's when the lights when out. The weight was crushing it seemed, the pain in my right hand was like someone standing on the edge of the hand (between the little finger and the wrist) wearing high heal shoes. I had no idea what happened, couldn't move, black as any black that I had ever experienced in my life. Then came the realization that we were buried alive in a cave in, and I could breath under ground! Listen up world people can breath through dirt! Then I figured it out I was on my hands and knees breathing the small amount of air one would have crunched up in a ball. NOT GOOD!
I heard noise and my brother yelling off in the distance my name, I yelled back- he said he had to dig his body out first then get me so "hang on don't get excited". Listen you stupid jerk " I am calm" I'm thinking (brothers will be brothers-always trying to out do each other) So I slowed my breathing right down, using every bit of my thought process in not using up this increasing amount of stale air that I was using. What seemed a lifetime my brother digging me out, asking every 30 seconds how I was doing? Digging for my head.
I can't remember how long it took him to hit the blonde hair with the scratcher, but it hurt digging into my scalp-that produced a yelp from me-followed by a verbal tirade. He grabbed my hair and pulled up-producing yet another long winded blue aired reply from me-then I saw the light and the fresh air that filled my lungs once again. Now the problem of getting my body out as my arm was stretched out and the hand was pinned between something that felt it was cutting it apart. It took a good 20 minutes of digging but my brother got me out, and then the fear gripped us when we were packing up to leave-where was mom's new scratcher? Forget about being buried alive-nearly suffocating to death-this would be certain death loosing the scratcher! So we had to dig and dig finally locating it in the dirt. So off home after washing up in the creek getting rid of the dirt off of anything hair and skin related. (clothes would washed by mom-no worry there-just the cost of doing this hobby) So on returning home-stashing the now well used scratcher in it's hidden location. We heard the comment "You guys are sure dirty-and you expect me to do the laundry for you-don't you?" remark as we were off to go to our other dump site down another road.
When arriving we sadly discovered 40 ft of bank slid plus part of the road on top of our tunnels ending our fun for that location as well. We came to a mutual agreement between myself and my brother (a rare feat in itself) that digging tunnels under roads might not be the wisest thing to do.
This was just another one of my nine lives used up.

Note: The roads department discovered two partial road cave-ins and loads of gravel were used to build the road edge up again. That's when the speech was heard in the household "Don't you two boys go digging under any road causing damage" Not ever knowing the whole story till decades later.
 

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Does anybody remember those old water color paint kits they used to sell? They had the paint dried into a disc about the size of two nickels stacked on top of each other. I had a neighbor that was a jerk. He was about 4 years older than me. His family had an in-ground pool with a cement bottom, not the vinyl bottoms you see today. I would take the paint discs and throw them into his pool. It would turn the water of the pool funky colors, but it would also stain the white cement. He would have to put so much chlorine into the pool to bleach the stain that they would not be able to use the pool for a week or more. He was always so pissed that he couldn't use his pool in the hot humid summers of Central Florida. He should have treated the younger kids in the neighborhood better.
 

Does anybody remember those old water color paint kits they used to sell? They had the paint dried into a disc about the size of two nickels stacked on top of each other. I had a neighbor that was a jerk. He was about 4 years older than me. His family had an in-ground pool with a cement bottom, not the vinyl bottoms you see today. I would take the paint discs and throw them into his pool. It would turn the water of the pool funky colors, but it would also stain the white cement. He would have to put so much chlorine into the pool to bleach the stain that they would not be able to use the pool for a week or more. He was always so pissed that he couldn't use his pool in the hot humid summers of Central Florida. He should have treated the younger kids in the neighborhood better.

that's one way to have fun
 

that's one way to have fun

His chores around the house included taking care of the pool. He would spend lots of time getting it ready to use and then have it delayed another week. I was amused to no end.
 

His chores around the house included taking care of the pool. He would spend lots of time getting it ready to use and then have it delayed another week. I was amused to no end.

what you should of done was put some dropped some other stuff in there
 

that's one way to have fun
I poured several bottles of red RIT clothing dye into a tub and chucked it over the fence into a neighbor kids pool. His Dad would not let us all swim in it because he was afraid that all of the kids would pee in it. The one time we did swim all he would say is that he put a special chemical in the pool and if anyone pee'd the water would turn red around us. Then he bailed out of the idea all together because he was pee paranoid. The whole pool turned red. Could have been easily fixed but I believe he drained the whole thing and started over.
 

Scope for many more FIREWORK stories here....

The kids at school whent through a phase of tying about 2 yards of cotton thread to a lump of bread and the other end to little coloured pieces of paper (stolen from the art room) about the size of a small bow tie. They fed these by the dozens to seagulls who ate them up...flew around with 'kite' attatched then barfed it up sometime later...oh the cruelty... It was quite a spectacle to see dozens of seagulls towing around these things over the sports field. eventually the teachers on yard duty got wind of it. Im not sure what( if any) punishment was.

Another time the teacher left the room and we had a spit ball frienzy...the roof was covered in spitballs. When she returned all the less sloppy ones started falling off one by one... That didnt end well...

Chub
 

In high school I was one of the 'poor' kids. We didnt have fancy clothes or shoes, government scheme books etc. But didn't all the 'rich' pretty boys let me know it. heckling me the whole time about my shoes and clothes even my school bag.

Fast forward to the end of year assembly. The whole school seated for over an hour. In the morning I'd used my last piece of gum and been chewing that sucker for HOURS... until the point its pretty much disintergrating in my mouth.
We take our seats....and guess whos sitting infront of us? yep , the entire pretty boy brigade.

It was the 80's and biggish frizzy hair was in fashion...

Over the course of 1 hour I emptied my mouth of gum by rolling up 1/8" bbs of disintegrating gum and flicking it into the hair of these guys. At first they didnt notice.When they look around Im stoned faced. The best part is when they tried to pull it out, the lightest pressure between thumb and forefinger made sure it was stuck good. One guy didn't notice at all and his hair looked like a christmas tree (such are the perils of big frizzy hair).

Good way to finish high school.

Chub
 

Alas We fed Alka Seltser chips to seagulls and blew them up. They can't burp.
The funnies was the Hard cooked bacon on a cotton string 25 or so feet long. Took it to the lake and feed it to a duck. Duck eats and can't digest it. evacuates it and another duck eats it. Ducks on string a a day or so. String eventually digests and they are free.
 

The old green apples. My brother were wiping them crab apple to see who's would go the farthest. We broke the neighbors picture window out. Boy our butts hurt for weeks.

My buddy and I found some matches.We were 8, So we wanted to smoke some hey. We ended up catching his neighbors fence on fire. What a yiht show that day was. We use to cut 12 gauge shotgun shells in 1/2, take out the wad & shoot it at stranger's who showed up at the door. (funny as hell) Please don't ever do it. not very smart kids. I don't even know how i'am living today. I could go on and on.
 

The old green apples. My brother were wiping them crab apple to see who's would go the farthest. We broke the neighbors picture window out. Boy our butts hurt for weeks.

My buddy and I found some matches.We were 8, So we wanted to smoke some hey. We ended up catching his neighbors fence on fire. What a yiht show that day was. We use to cut 12 gauge shotgun shells in 1/2, take out the wad & shoot it at stranger's who showed up at the door. (funny as hell) Please don't ever do it. not very smart kids. I don't even know how i'am living today. I could go on and on.
That would get you arrested today. A severe beating back then.
 

my grandparents had a well with limited water supply, so only the women were allowed to use the indoor bathroom. All males had to walk to the old outhouse which was about fifty yards from the house just past the garden. The outhouse was very weathered and had no sign of paint ever being on it. In fact, you could see out pretty well from the inside. if we had toilet paper, that was awesome but at times, the old Sears catalogs were used. Anyways, one of our aunts(my grandfather's sister) from California, I guess couldn't wait for who ever was in the bathroom to get out and made her way to the outhouse. Several of my older cousins and myself decided to do what we did to each other at times when caught using the outhouse, we began throwing the rotten apples at the structure. Now there were about a dozen apple trees and they really produced so we had a very generous supply of rotten ones. Anyhow, we kept her in there for over half an hour until the wasps and other bugs began checking the mess out. Of course we ran and hid to watch her as she came out. I know that she could see who was doing it and as she went inside, I figured that my Dad would be coming out to beat the living daylights out of me but he never did. She was in her late seventies then and never told anyone what we had done but reminded me of it when she was in her early nineties. For an old lady, she was pretty cool and even told me some of the things that she had done.
 

A gallon of high concentrated soap detergent in the town centre fountain. Bubble bath shut the highway down for hours as they tried to shut this fountain off. Harmless clean fun.

Note: Overgrown kids living out the dreams of when they could afford the gallon on soap.:laughing7:
 

my grandparents had a well with limited water supply, so only the women were allowed to use the indoor bathroom. All males had to walk to the old outhouse which was about fifty yards from the house just past the garden. The outhouse was very weathered and had no sign of paint ever being on it. In fact, you could see out pretty well from the inside. if we had toilet paper, that was awesome but at times, the old Sears catalogs were used. Anyways, one of our aunts(my grandfather's sister) from California, I guess couldn't wait for who ever was in the bathroom to get out and made her way to the outhouse. Several of my older cousins and myself decided to do what we did to each other at times when caught using the outhouse, we began throwing the rotten apples at the structure. Now there were about a dozen apple trees and they really produced so we had a very generous supply of rotten ones. Anyhow, we kept her in there for over half an hour until the wasps and other bugs began checking the mess out. Of course we ran and hid to watch her as she came out. I know that she could see who was doing it and as she went inside, I figured that my Dad would be coming out to beat the living daylights out of me but he never did. She was in her late seventies then and never told anyone what we had done but reminded me of it when she was in her early nineties. For an old lady, she was pretty cool and even told me some of the things that she had done.
Old ladies are just Friskys that are older. You can't get anything past them because they did all of the same things we are doing now. And the World Turns
 

In my sophomore year of high school, a friend on mine had this thing about sabotaging everyones food at school with Ex-Lax when we were at lunch. I warned him to never put Ex-Lax in my food as I had had that done years earlier by my cousins. Well, did he listen, no. When I came back from getting another chocolate milk and had taken a small bite of my brownie, I knew something was up. When he got up to get seconds, I checked all of my food and had everyone else at the table to check theirs. We found about three full and two partially eaten pieces and I stuffed them into his food and he ate every bite. Well the very next morning, I missed the school bus because I had diarrhea and had to walk 5 miles to school and did not get there until about 9:30 AM. When I left the High School Office and was heading to my Home Room, my friend was running down the hall holding his butt and he was white as a ghost. He ran into the bathroom, into the stall, dropped his pants and crapped all over the wall. Come to find out, he had been running to the bathroom about every 10 minutes since getting to school and he was nearly dehydrated. Afterwards, I told him that he was warned to not put any Ex-Lax in my food. The Principal caught on to what had happened and that my friend had put Ex-Lax in the Cook's food and most were out that day due to having diarrhea but since we all were involved, we got marched into the Principal's Office and got our butt's beat. I swear that the Principal intended to hit my' cookies with the first lick of his' strap and although it hurt bad and doubled me over, I balled up my' fist, turned around and said sternly, "if you hit me there again, I am going to deck you" and he was very careful where he placed the other nine licks.


Frank
 

A gallon of high concentrated soap detergent in the town centre fountain. Bubble bath shut the highway down for hours as they tried to shut this fountain off. Harmless clean fun.

Note: Overgrown kids living out the dreams of when they could afford the gallon on soap.:laughing7:


The Whittier fountain at Mar Vista and Colima was a frequent target for us boys. It was three lanes wide both ways at the corner and we built a wall of suds 5 feet high across the whole thing many times. We soaped it so much that the Police Chief knocked on our door and asked for my dad. We were squirting poo. My Dad came to the door and he said please have a conversation with your son and ask him to not soap the fountain anymore? My dad had a conversation with my older brother who denied it to the end of the earth. ( because it wasn't him and he had no idea who it was)
 

A gallon of high concentrated soap detergent in the town centre fountain. Bubble bath shut the highway down for hours as they tried to shut this fountain off. Harmless clean fun.

Note: Overgrown kids living out the dreams of when they could afford the gallon on soap.:laughing7:
We lived a bicycle ride from a janitorial supply house. You could buy Joy Dish washing liquid by the gallon(Cheap) It only took 3 of those and a 3 1/2 gallon pail (transfer soap to pail and drop in on a walk by) to turn the fountain into a bubble machine. It worked best if you dropped it about half way across the fountain from the pumps intake. THis allowed the proper ratio of water and soap to hit the pump. If you dropped it on the pump intake (Put bucket in side ways) all of the soap would go to work and you would get an instant boil over but the soap would be gone before it traveled to far. If you dumped it over away from the pump intake you would get a mass of bubbles in less than a minute. Better quantity but not nearly enough to build a huge wall. If you placed the bucket upright under the water 10 feet from the pump, the soap would percolate and introduce itself slowly to the water supply. The water was about three feet deep and by the time the water level reached the top of the bucket the soap was pretty much gone from the bucket and it was making a beautiful Wall of suds. After the police talked to my dad we of course soaped it again, but they had added a huge amount of wetting agent to the water and defeated its ability to make bubbles. The fountain was blowing thick white soap streams It looked like a snow blowing fountain. Looked cool but they definitely spoiled our fun. Hmmm I wonder if they are still using that wetting agent?
 

I took a bunch of M-80's my brother had hidden and went down the sand pit with a bunch of friends,well,I lit one with a sparkler went to throw it and saw a puff of smoke so I stopped and looked at it...BANG,blew my middle finger tip off and was hanging by a piece of skin,I also looked like I was shot with a shotgun,my right eye brow was hanging down and bleeding,ruptured my right eardrum,I ended up in the hospital for 5 days.What really ticked me off was it was the day after school was out for the summer and couldn't go swimming for quite some time.The 6 kids that were with me said..Chris you better go home,of course none of them would walk with me and I had to walk half a mile bleeding all over the place. Didn't mess with that stuff for years after.:tongue3:

GOD Bless

Chris
 

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