BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid

Subject: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 06:27 PM

We had a lot of fun with cherry bombs back then. I found a thingee that was supposed to hold the leg of some scaffolding or something and used it as a rocket launcher by stuffing a cherry bomb inside, lighting it through a lower screw opening where the fuse could be seen, and sticking a practice golf ball or a crabapple in the top opening at the end of the tube. Very satisfying, specially with the crab apples, cos they would go a long way up. Made a hell of a bang too, and produced a great puff of smoke out the various apertures.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 06:32 PM

Sodium chlorate and sugar made a superb smoke bomb -- enough smoke to fill an entire street and require a visit from the fire brigade. So I heard ... it wasn't me, some big kids did it and ran away ...

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 06:36 PM

My mother's Three Great Rules (promulgated after the facts, which I will leave to your imagination):

1. Thou Shalt No Longer Make Pyrotechnics, Fireworks, or Explosives In The Basement. Thou SHALT Do So Out-Of-Doors, Lest I Smite Thee Good.

2. The Making Of Tear Gas, Or Any Noxious Gas Or "War Gas," Is Completely Forbidden, In The Basement Or In Any Part Of The House. If Thou Feelst That Thou Must Do So, Do It Out-Of-Doors And Downwind From The House, Lest Thou Feel My Wrath.

3. Experimentation With Electricity Shall Under No Circumstances Cause The Circuit Breakers To Trip.

The was a fourth one added later. Again, I leave the circumstances to your imagination:

4. Thou Shalt Not Fire Off Twelve Gauge Shotguns In The House, Lest Thou Find Thyself Amongst The Homeless.

Somehow, we all survived more or less intact....

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: *daylia*
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 09:20 PM

There were six kids in my family, very close in age and we sure cooked up some dumb ways to amuse ourselves! We used to have barefoot races in the snow when the adults weren't looking. It was a kind of dare to see who could stand the pain the longest. Great fun, and I used to win a lot too, till I got pneumonia and had to spend a couple weeks in the hospital getting needles in the butt...

Then when we got older (but not much wiser!) we took to 'bumper-shinin' as a winter sport. We'd wait till dark, then sneak up behind unsuspecting cars as they waited at the stop-sign in front of the house.   We'd grab onto the back bumper and hold on for dear life as the car took us for a wild 'boot-ride' over the icy country roads. Had to watch out for that exhaust though, just like those dogs on Cheech and Chong. Wore out the boots pretty quick too!

But I think one of the craziest things we ever did was try "waterskiing" on our little plastic mini-skiis behind a snowmobile.
That was very exciting until I hit a stump buried in the snow once at about 40mph. Nearly broke my leg - had a bruise the size of a dinner plate for about 2 months.

Come to think of it, it's a wonder I survived childhood!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Bobert
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 09:43 PM

I'm kinda like you, LH, with the cherry bomb fixation. Yeah, they would blow up in the pipes at the old Falls Church High School and everyone in the entire school would hear em'. That was cool, fir sure. But they would also blow up in the stream where the water was backed up and then a bunch of little fish would float to the top fir a while. Some forever (sniff...). But when I was around 14, I discovered the ultimate. The cherry bomb/ blow gun. Now you could take a cherry bomb and a rubber stopper and a 5 foot tube and get a cherry bomb about a hundred feet from you before it blew up. This was real cool on Holloween night. You could blow up a pumkin with a match and a hefty blow. Ya know them blow guns are real easy to aim and mw and my hoodlum frineds could almost decide which eye of the Jacko-Latern to send the cherry bomb thru... Of course, it would cost you a rubber stopper but, hey.... Only worry was a short fuse where the danged thing blows up in the tube and blows yir danged teeth down yir throat but that never happened and, being 14 'er so, you never think of that kind of stuff....

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: khandu
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 10:20 PM

There were 6 kids in my family. We were dirt poor. So we invented our entertainment. (Dang, Bobert, you musta been rich! You cud erfford cherry bombs!)

There was a steep hill (maybe a 45 degree incline), perhaps 50 feet from top to bottom, near our home. My neighbor would bring his toy cars over and we would run them down the hill. Eventually we decided that the cars need a driver, so we would tie frogs in the seat. Often the cars wrecked, but the frogs always survived, We thought it was a hoot, until mama cought us "mistreating poor helpless frogs".

She told Dad and to teach us a lesson, he tied me in a little red wagon, and pushed me over a cliff, maybe 80 feet from top to bottom.
I was not as tough as the frogs. The first push killed me dead. I never did get over it, and I have been traumatized ever since.

k

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 11:10 PM

Danged, Kenny. Iz real sorry that yer dead! Me, too...

Like i was about 12 'er 11 an', well, my buddy Jim Clark told me that he'd seen this guy get up on a pole about a 100 feet up in the air and would dive off into a wading pool with about 6 inches of water...

Well, me and my Ginny, now my Wes ginny slide rule, stayed up all night and figured, heck if the guy on the TV could survive a dive from a 100 feet into 6 inches of water then if I got up on top of the barn, which was only 35 feet, that I'd only need two inches of water...

So the next day I set up folding chairs and sold tickets fir about 25 cents a seat and proceeded to get up on the barn roof with the K-Mart blowed-up pool with 2 inches of water in it..;.

So, I looked down at that pool and it looked like rather than 35 feet away the pool looked more like about 35 miles. Know what I mean? But, heck, seein' as I had 4 bucks in my pocket fir them kids down there in the church folding chairs, I reckon I had to go thru with the dive...

Well, about the time my feet and the barn roof deoarted company a big gust of wind came up on us and blew me off course just enough so that I missed them K-Mart pool by a foot or so and well, I'z here (or not)to say that missin that pool with them two inches of water was n ot a good idea.

Afer about 5 minutes of wonderin' first if I was alive and...second, was that good???...ahhhh, I realized that at that point in time I was alive... I think?.... Heck, maybe I wasn't but that doesn't have nothin' to do with the story...

So, Iz think I came back fir a second before going to that Big-Old-Guitar-Shop-In-The-Sky, looked up at my dad who had been watching the entire $4 Bobert promotion and he said, "Ahhh. Shake it off, kid..."

That's my latest story and Iz stickin' to it until any one, including myself, can prove that I exist...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 11:17 PM

My childhood was boring, dull, bland and mundane. In fact, I have determined that it was not my childhood at all. It happened to somebody else. It is impossible that the person who had my childhood could have grown up to be me. The person who had my childhood lives in a suburb, works for an accounting firm and drives a Ford Taurus.

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: open mike
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 11:35 PM

I liked to catch garter snakes, and the phrase
"where the air smelled like snakes" always brings
back a fragrant memory! they lived under the gutter
drain pipe on the side of the house, and sometimes
my friend and i would get 20 or more of them in a
cage. the next door neighbor liked to chop their
heads off with a hoe, so i felt obliged to save
them. Also liked to go on bicycle rides..at first
5-10 blocks from home, then 5-10 miles, then 50-60
miles. That was easy in Nebraska where the ground
was flat and you could easily average 20 mph. When
our family would go travelling we would collect
soil samples to see how many idfferent colors there
were.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 11:53 PM

Every year I used to create a concoction called "stalerot". The main ingredient was really gooey mud, carefully strained to remove all small particles of rocks and sand, so that it was totally slimy and slippery. To that I added lots of bugs of all kinds, dead or alive, and any bits of organic material I could find, with the exception of dog manure...I drew the line there.

Each spring, when good fresh mud became available, I would begin a new batch of stalerot and work on it through the summer, adding new ingredients and periodically cooking up the whole mess in a coffee tin over an open fire. The purpose I had in mind was to create something that smelled incredibly foul, and I generally succeeded admirably in doing so. My friends would check it out now and then and utter cries of disgust. This was quite encouraging.

One summer there was a plague of these little beetles with green and yellow stripes. I put a few hundred of them in the stalerot and cooked 'em all up at a slow simmer.

Two weeks later I took a sniff of that stalerot, and it smelled so incredibly bad that I almost threw up on the spot. I still feel vaguely queasy when I think about it. After that I lost my taste for stalerot. So ended a great tradition. When you have achieved the ultimate in something, it's time to take up a new trade or just go stale.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 12:14 AM

We moved a lot...and the first thing I did every place we moved was to climb all the trees that were climbable!
   My mother would come out and say "you're going to fall and break your neck...come DOWN" ...but I would say "come up & GET me"...and I never did fall. I think she was always disappointed.

...and yeah, fireworks...cherry bombs, M-80s...inventing ways to launch stuff out of pipes...etc...

I also dug holes for playing with toy vehicles...BIG holes (with a friend)...kinda like an open pit mine with roads up the inside.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 12:48 AM

Holes were neat. So were tree forts and other types of forts, easily constructed with whatever old junk was lying around. The main problem was that some jerks always came and wrecked them when you weren't there.

My mother also predicted literally thousands of potential disasters, not one of which ever happened. She's still doing that to this day, but not so much with regard to me (thank God).

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Deckman
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 01:24 AM

Daylia ... Your story about barefoot running in the snow reminded me of my childhood. It was a New Years eve tradition in my family for my late Father to challenge my brother and I to a barefoot race in the snow. Dad was Finnish and was used to it. I still remember the year I was 12, I kept up with Dad all the way to the bridge and back and was able to laugh at my older brother because he chickened out halfway there! Ahhh ... to be that young ... and dumb ... again! Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 01:26 AM

I brought a baby skunk home. It was fine until it met the dog. I think, that is when it learned how to spray. My folks were not happy that night. The house was smellin' to high heaven for a week or more.
Peace, Rustic

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: JennyO
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 02:41 AM

I was out in the country with my family one weekend when I was about 8, and saw a gate with one of those cattle grids. I decided that if I used sheer willpower and took a run at it, I could get across without slipping. I made it more than halfway before my foot went between the grids, and finished up with stitches in my heel. The scar I still have now is one of my identifying marks.

There were also attempts to fly off the clothesline, which I thought I could do if I wanted to badly enough. No serious injuries, fortunately.

Since then, I have had many dreams about flying, some of them quite amazing! Maybe I was a bird in a previous life???

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: BlueJay
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 04:21 AM

Probably the funnest thing that I and my pre-teen cohorts discovered was that you can rip a page out of "Popular Science", roll it into an elongated cone, and shoot it like a blowgun out of a piece of electrical conduit, which at the time was readily salvagable from most construction sites in the evening hours. Packing a weight, such as a small pebble or a fishing weight into the small end of the cone greatly improved the missile's trajectory and range.

An alternate technique involved rolling a firecracker into the tip of the cone. Unfortunately, the launching was very tricky, and the range wasn't more than about twenty feet.

So my friends and I would set up post on a building under construction, and armed with a couple of hundred of these harmless paper ddarts would pelt the unsuspecting motorists below. Never saw an accident as a result, though we did hit quite a few on the hood. The cops nevr caught on, in spite of all the flattened darts on the roadway.

I would highly recommend this activity to our youth, as an alternative to some of the more destructive practices happening these days. Thanks, BlueJay

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 04:34 AM

There were loads of 'sand caves' in the side of hill near us, some quite deep. We were in and out of them all time. Makes me shudder to think what could have happened. There were also some holes in the side of the river Irwell valley which we crawled into. One had a chamber inside with a big rusty wheel on the ceiling. We spend hours trying to turn this wheel. Only many years later did I realise it was a sluice for when Fletchers canal, above it, was too full and needed draining into the Irwell. There must have been an equivalent 'wheel' above the surface. I'm pretty glad we never managed to move it:-)

Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: bassen
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 04:37 AM

BIG holes in the ground, yeah and tree forts. Ours never got left alone. Was there some kind of secret childhood society of fort wreckers? If so they had a big following in Redlands, Calif.

When I was about 5 I discovered these sets of vertical slots in the wall that had to be tweezer holders, so I shoved a pair of tweezers into a pair of holes to test my theory. The resulting blue flash and WHUMP! was really neat, as were all the blown fuses in the fuse box, not to mention the electric shock and burns I got on my hand. My parent's reaction must have been extreme, cuz I can't remember it at all.

We used to chuck cherry bombs into the ditches along the orange groves. If you were lucky you'd get this mini-depth charge whoosh of frogs eggs, rotten oranges, dead leaves and mud all over the kids playing boats in the muddy water there...

We made elaborate forts filled with plastic soldiers, then took these plastic syringes we found in the trash behind the cow barn at the dairy (for treating udders???), filled them with gasoline then sprayed gas through a flame all over the soldiers. Flamethrower! The soldiers melted in agony.

But the ultimate was when Mike Rose stole a box of shotgun shells from his dad's closet. We stripped them then filled an appropriate length of plugged pipe with gunpowder, stuffed in some wadding, poured in buckshot, then more wadding. There was this old work bench with a vise in the back-back yard, we clamped the loaded pipe in the vise, then turned the bench towards the incinerator. I was of course the one who dared to try to light the priming powder on the flash hole. The whooshBANG was totally satisfying as was the sight of the gaping hole in the back wall of the incinerator. What's more, the backflash had given me a real, genyouwine powder burn on my hand (gruff John Wayne/Randolph Scott voice "Don't worry ma'm, it's just a powder burn) But the ultimate rush was looking at our cannon and seeing the plug in the back was just a wooden plug and almost completely blown out the back of the pipe. In other words, if we had rammed the wadding a little tighter, the whole thing would have blown out the back of the pipe straight into my stomach. Really cool!!!

Then there were Molotov cocktails, homemade napalm, matchhead cannons and...

As daylia mentioned above, it's a wonder we survived childhood.

bassen

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: JennyO
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 05:11 AM

Just remembered something else:

When I was 11 and living in Goulburn, a country town, I remember two things:

- In the summer we used to catch Christmas beetles - big noisy things with irridescent backs, and let them go in the classroom to fly around and distract the teacher. I've seen Christmas beetles since, but the big variety that I remember seem to be gone, or maybe it was a local thing.

- Also in the summer there was a kind of tree in the playground that grew long thin green trumpet-like things - maybe they were a kind of seed pod - and we could blow through them and make a piercing high kazoo-like sound. That went down well in the classroom, too.{:)}

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Jeanie
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 05:19 AM

Oh, Little Hawk, your "stalerot" has brought back so many memories for me ! My version of the concoction was called "repulsive sugar", which I used to grind, blend, decant, mix and add ingredients to over a period of years, with my friend Lena. Being reasonably eco-friendly little girls, no *live* animals were harmed in our work, but apart from that, our "sugar" was very much like your "stalerot", and was kept in a gigantic chinese vase of dried pampas grass at the top of the staircase in Lena's house. Cream cheese blended with washing-up liquid and a few dead spiders, for instance. We just kept on adding layers to it. How it wasn't discovered, I'll never know. Parents with no sense of smell, and a well-ventilated hallway, I suppose.

Other things we used to do: pretending to be foreigners from some indeterminate and vaguely Eastern-European country, and asking people for directions to places. Or if we were travelling on the train or bus, we would have loud and animated conversations in some mock foreign language. We also used to note down all the numbers of a row of telephone boxes in the market place, go into the end one and when someone went into one of the other boxes, we'd call the number and see what they'd do. Gave us a lot of fun and, secretly, I'd really rather like to do all that again now !

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: JennyO
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 05:26 AM

That puts me in mind of another kids' prank - not one I've done myself, though. They ring someone up and say:

"is Mr Wall there?
No.
What about Mrs Wall?
No.
Are there any Walls there?
No.
Then what's keeping your roof up?"

Boom Boom

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: open mike
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 07:18 AM

when we called we asked if they had prince albert in a can (tobacco)
then we said they should let him out, because they shouldn't keep him cooped up in a can like that.
oh ;yes and after the movie mary poppins, i tried to jump off the roof with an umbrella. my ankles did not like that.
i was always bringing home birds with broken wings, and other critters to rescue.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 07:35 AM

One Fourth of July my brother Tony collected all of the unexploded firecrackers, fountains, and other fireworks he could find. Cut 'em open and put all of the powder into an alumininum bowl. He must have had a pound of it (half a kilo, for those who use metric). He was sitting on the front porch with the bowl between his legs when he accidentally dropped a hot ash into it.... The resulting flash cost him his eyebrows and half the hair on his head, burnt holes in his clothes, and if he hadn't worn glasses, probably would have cost his eyesight. "Powder burns" doesn't begin to describe his condition, either.

Mom went into church one Saturday afternoon, Tony and I played "Follow The Leader" in the asphalted playground. The game went well, until he decided to be the leader and jump through moving swings. Mom came out of church as I was trying to stop the blood cascading down his face from the cut on his forehead. That got him back to the emergency room....

When I was about 4 I locked my father and mother out of the house and was so afraid of punishment that I didn't let them in. Until...my father appeared behind me! He'd climbed a ladder and entered through a second (British first) floor window....

Forts. My brothers and I started digging with spoons in a lot behind our house. A neighbor came over to help, then we got shovels.... Two weeks later we had "Deep Fort" -- an L-shaped excavation about six feet deep. This isn't much, except that we lived on "filled land" (an old dump) and we had to remove A LOT of scrap. One was the entire roof to a model T Ford car. Deep Fort existed, of course, because it was a hole, and holes "are their own excuse for being."

The beat goes on: Tony bought a blowgun -- the kind that shoots darts -- a year ago Christmas. His youngest son, age 7 then, shot him in the butt with a dart....

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: *daylia*
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 10:53 AM

All these stories about critters brought a few more memories to mind ...

We LOVED critters as kids and were always trying to catch new 'pets'. I used to love bugs, collected them inside glass jars with holes punched through the lids. One night as I was falling asleep my Mom came into my bedroom and picked up the jar full of my latest crawling collection. She was peering inside for awhile, trying to see them, and finally unscrewed the lid to take a real good look.

Well, all the bugs happened to be clinging to the inside of the lid, and when she saw that she let out this bloodcurdling scream and pitched the lid across the room. All the spiders and praying mantises and big-eyed elators and crickets went flying in every direction, and I never got out of a bed so fast in my life...

Then there was the time my brother and I won the draw for the baby alligator on the last day of school (I think we were the only ones who bought tickets!) We were so proud - took it home and decked out the bathtub real nice for it. Lots of rocks and mud from the garden ... and the alligator was so happy ... until my Dad got home from work and went to take a shower. I'll never forget the sight of him standing on the front porch in his underwear in front of the whole neighborhood screaming "Either that THING goes or I do!!!...."

And what is it about little boys and frogs anyway? I quite liked frogs - when I was about 6 or 7 I'd visit the nearby pond and stuff my shirt full of them so I could carry them home on my bike (the very thought of that now gives me the willies!). That was real fun until I forgot I'd put them all in the window-well one hot summer day - When I found their shrivelled black carcasses a few days later I cried for about a week ...

But the worst was what my piano teacher's sons used to do to the frogs in the pond on their farm. They'd try to shoo me away first, telling me I had 'girl-germs' etc., but one day I hid on them to see what they were up to. They stuffed those poor frogs with firecrackers at both ends and then lit them off - the frogs would explode into this fountain of slimy red-green bits in mid-air. The boys were ecstatic - I was horrified!

I ratted on them too!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: GUEST,Foe
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 11:17 AM

As a substitute for firecrackers, we would take two bolts and one nut. Screw the nut on just a little on the end of one bolt to make a little well. We then cut the white tips off wooden matches and stuck them in the well. Then we'd screw the other bolt into the nut and throw the whole contraption up in the air so it would land on a hard surface (street, parking lot) A big bang and occasionally one bolt would even fly off.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 11:47 AM

hey!...did anyone else make wooden guns with a clothes pin mounted on top which fired matches? All you did was take a spring clothes pin apart and re-rig it so it could be cocked with a kitchen match inserted.....and when you tripped it with your thumb, the match would be launched...lighted...for, oh maybe 4-5 feet!

I wonder if I could still figure that out?

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: JennyO
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 11:49 AM

I keep thinking of new things.

We had tomatoes growing in a garden at the side of the house. One day I picked one to eat (I love tomatoes - always have) and took it inside. Then I heard someone calling me. I figured I would get into trouble for picking it, so I looked around and stuffed it into the nearest thing I could find, which happened to be the drawer of a large dresser. Then I forgot about it - for years, until when we finally moved house, somebody opened the drawer and there was a neat little pile of green dust. "Wonder what that is?" they said. I said nothing, but I remembered. Obviously it was a drawer they didn't use very often!

In my family we were expected to eat what we were given, no matter what, and finish everything on the plate. We were not allowed to say "I've had enough", so my brother and I had to resort to subterfuge. I remember getting lamb chops for breakfast, which I liked normally, but couldn't face first thing in the morning. I used to sometimes chuck them out the window into the tomato garden when nobody was looking.

The thing my brother wanted to get rid of was apple and custard, although I didn't know at the time. We even hid what we were doing from each other. We had an old fashioned stove called an "Early Kooka", with a picture of a kookaburra on it, with legs and a space underneath. At some stage when somebody finally got around to cleaning under the stove, they discovered a collection of bowls with dried up stuff in them, which Graham had put there. Don't know why they never wondered how come they were running out of bowls!

Graham and I get a lot of laughs now about the weird things we used to do as kids.

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 12:09 PM

I suspect that many guys on this thread were but a tiny spark away from a burn ward........

When the big plastic trash bags appeared they were perfect for balloons. No, not your regular balloons.....Exploding balloons!!! Turn off the pilot light on your friend's gas stove and hold the bag over an unlit burner til it fills up. Being a bit lighter than air now, you seal up the bottom tightly after leaving about a foot of green fuse hanging out. Take the sucker outside (kinda' hard getting them through the doors and parents will ask about the funny gas smell if it rips), light the fuse, let it go. At this point, I advise knowing the wind direction because these things don't get up real high and being chased by an about-to-explode balloon is no laughing matter. Anyway, when all goes well, your balloon should make it 100 or so feet up and go BOOM with a nice little fireball and a melted bag descending.

Here's a fun one. Come up with some reason to have your friend Cary bring the school welding shop's acetylene/oxy tanks to the gym. This is relatively easy if you are building a set for a play. Arrange for the two of you to get into the gym at halftime along with the football teams. Very easy if you have a third partner named Gary on the team. When the hallway clears and both teams are in the locker rooms, quickly lay a bead down the opposing team's door.....If you are well prepared, this will take less than 3 minutes. When questioned, lie, deny, and make counter allegations. Serve the three day suspension which is all they can do since they aren't positive it was you.

When I was a freshman at Berea, the dorm had all tile floors so a popular pastime was to take a can of lighter fluid and write something in front of someone's door, light it, and step into another room. When they opened the door, there was a nice flaming "fuck you" or "shit" or "dumbass." This was really popular in front of the door of one particular jackwad who was a real ass. The practice stopped when he tried to get even. He thought the two guys next door were doing it so he emptied his can of lighter fluid under their door and lit it. This set the closet curtains on fire and had the two guys inside ready to go out the third story window! Fortunately a group of us managed to get the fire out without calling the FD, but that put an end to this little novelty and the jackwad's college career at Berea as well. I suppose I should have felt badly about that, but like I said, he was an ass.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 12:10 PM

One of my favourite explosive substances was Ammonium Tri-iodide which you can make (in small amounts !) by pouring strong ammonia over ground iodine crystals and filtering out the result. It's only really possible to do anything with it while it's still damp - when dry, it will detonate violently with the slightest friction - a small grain will make quite a loud crack - any larger amount can cause temporary deafness. One of my favourite uses was to mix it with grains of sugar on a piece of card and leave it near an ant's nest. The "advancing troops" would keep blowing up as they crossed the "minefield".
Another classic use was to paint small amounts on toilet seats (preferably in female toilets) the application of a posterior not only caused a small explosion, but usually left brown/purple stains around the cheeks.

We had an elderly aunt who stayed with us sometimes. She tended to be a bit nosey and would often poke around in the room which I shared with my brother, in spite of warnings from my mother. One day I had made quite a large quantity of Ammonium Tri-iodide and had left it on the filter paper rather too long. I was out at the bottom of the garden when I heard the bang. When I got into the house a completely paralysed aunt was staring at a cloud of purple iodine vapour and it took some time before my mother and I could get her moved to a chair for a restorative "cuppa". She was rather deaf for days - but she stopped poking around in our room. I was soundly reprimanded by my mother, but years later she told me that she had a hard job keeping a straight face !

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 12:23 PM

This thread has reminded me of a joke about the cruel things that little boys are capable of. I assume thet "cherry bombs" are small explosive devices. Over here around Guy Fawke's Night we'd have bangers which were tubular with a touchpaper fuse at one end.

A teacher asked the class to describe, one by one, what they'd enjoyed doing over the previous weekend. All went well until she got to Jimmy the little tearaway of the class. "Well miss, me an' my mate caught the neighbour's cat and stuck a banger up it's bum". "Rectum" interjected the shocked teacher. "Oh yes miss", replied Jimmy, "It certainly did - blew his bollocks off !"

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Socorro
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 12:42 PM

When someone told me i could get to China if i could just dig deep enough, i decided I really wanted to do that. I gave it a good try, but finally gave up when the hole in my backyard was about 3+ feet deep (I was digging in adobe with just a dull garden shovel).

Then, inspired by Winnie-the-Pooh & the Heffalump story, i decided to camouflage the hole and try to lure someone across it - to fall in for my amusement.
So i covered it with newspapers, then dirt & branches & got the spoiled brat down the street, told her there was candy on the other side of the yard, but she had to walk straight, no curving.
She looked very suspiciously at me, and refused, to my chagrin.

Lots of evil memories are flooding in - that was the first one.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: *daylia*
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 12:47 PM

HE HE HE You guys are so FUNNY! I'm going to make sure my 20yr old son doesn't see this thread - he might not have outgrown the explosives yet and we DO have a gas stove ...

And Dave the cat story is even better than the frogs {{{ :-) }}}

{:-O} Hey did I really say that? Must be getting more masculine in my old age ... better go change into a sweet frilly pink blouse with roses - (not frogs!) - on it QUICK! Shame on me!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: GUEST,autopilot
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 01:00 PM

There was a window at the end of the hall in our apartment building where I grew up overlooking a main avenue. We would shoot paper-clips at buses, cars, pedestrians, trucks...anything was fair game. We'd bend out the clips and then cut them with a pair of side cutters. The drugstore owner on the corner became a little suspicious as to why a 9 year old boy(my teenage brother, cousins and neighborhood hooligans would always send me in)would buy 4 boxes of paper-clips in one day. I told him they were for a school project to which he replied, "In the middle of summer?...hmmmm". He sold them to me anyway, but from then on we went to the big grocery store a few blocks away as they didn't seem to notice or care. Never did get caught and the sport soon died off as the teenagers were discovering girls and they all thought it was dumb. Not before we'd graduated to bigger and better rubber-bands, however. And I can recall my brother fashioning a sling-shot out of a coat hanger and all of us oooing and ahhhing over the fact it would reach the building accross the street. He's a cad engineer today...ahhh what becomes of the criminal mind?

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: GUEST,jimlad
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 01:36 PM

I don't know if I could be counted as a kid when I was 16,yeah I know it's pushing it a bit,but at our school at the last day I had not had a Physics/Chemistry lesson and the only person in the whole school who could do joined-up writing was the Headmaster.So from this poor start I entered the Electricity Indsustry(shocking innit?).

As an Apprentice one of my chores was to go to a local Garage/Gas Station(hope you all noticed my switch of laguages just then)to purchase a Gallon of Petrol/Gas(did it again)for the purpose of removing grease from electric motors and such like.
Returning one day from a mission I went into a toilet block which was situated on the edge of a huge yard used for storage of large cable drums and inhabited by huge muscular Irishmen who laid the cables. Now my tale goes downhill from here.

Whilst washing my hands a thought hit me. Having recently seen the war-film 'The Cruel Sea' and as previously stated having had a 16th century education,I found it highly unlikely that oil floating on water could be set aflame,Reasoning that the water would conduct the heat away(Who says 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' eh?).Now always being one to experiment I poured a moderate amount,sat 2 pints of Gas/Petrol(2 way translation) into the sink of warmish,well quite hot really water and applied a naked flame.To say what happened next was spectacular would be an understatement.

A sheet of flame appeared taking away my eyebrows,93% of the hair at the front of my head as well as doing terminal dammage to my woolen sweater.
And just when I was thinking the worst was over,bugger me!! it wasn't.
From one of the adjacent Sit-you-Downs came the voice of a man who want's to remain anonymous(Cyril Briggs if you must know) . Now Cyril was the works Arse-Licker/Brown-Noser(Seamless innit?)known to his best friend as 'Shitface'. "What the F*** was that?" he enquired
"My lighter blew up" I replied in a high falsetto voice hoping to wrong foot him.By now Cyril was wiping furiously and pulling up of his Strides/Trousers(Ozzy/English)meanwhile I had pulled the plug,got rid of the fiery liquid and was nonchalently coming my hair,or the bit that was left.

Oh Joy,Oh Happiness I was in the clear or was I?

"Jesus look at this" exclaimed Cy in an even higher falsetto than mine.I went to the toilet door to find every drain grid in the cable yard emitting flames 6ft high,one of the Irish lads said it's Methane in the sewers
And so Dear Reader I left it at that.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: *daylia*
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 01:41 PM

Bob - thanks for sharing your 'barefoot in the snow' story - just noticed it! I thought we were the only ones brave (or crazy?) enough to do something like that! A Finnish tradition you say? Geez maybe we were Finnish in a past life or something!

I'm just lucky that particular game didn't 'Finnish' me!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: JenEllen
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 01:49 PM

There's a hole about 30ft wide and 15ft deep behind my grandmother's house that is a testament to childhood earth-moving ingenuity. There is also a scorch mark on the side of the garage where we did the exploding bag trick, only with a mix of acetylene and oxygen from the torch kit, and a gunpowder 'joint' fuse. We all got poison ivy from the 'secret club initiation' of running throught the woods behind the house, and I have a scar on my shin from jumping off the barn loft into a pile of hay where my cousin secretly planted a pitchfork!

LH, your 'stalerot' story brought back memories!!
I have a second cousin, who when he was younger, delighted in telling us he was our parents cousin, and therefore too cool to hang around with US! When my grandmother mentioned he was coming for a visit on the weekend, the plans began.....

My oldest cousin was a royal pain, and gifted in the way that pain-in-the-ass kids are. He devised a plan where each of us would go into the sporting goods store in town and buy "Scent" (basically pee--to attract animals). We had our little bottles of deer pee, elk pee, fox pee, etc. We snuck out of the house one night, and by the light of the moon, dumped all of it in a plastic milk container, followed by a stolen can of beer, and four bottles of that men's Avon perfume that used to come in bottles shaped like classic cars.

The other operatives took an old sock, and filled it with a fish, some cottage cheese, and a pint of strawberry yogurt. The sock was put in a coffee can, and both the can and the milk jug were put in a sunny location to 'cook' for the week while we anticipated our cousin's visit.

The Friday night before, we popped the top on the milk jug, and strained the concoction through the sock full of fish goo, into the coffee can. We then, retching to beat the band, used my grandmother's recently liberated turkey baster to fill every single squirt gun we could lay our hands on.

When 'darling cousin' came to visit and wanted to play 'cowboys and injuns'? We unloaded on him. To this day he says he can smell it in his hair every time it rains.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 03:28 PM

Well, Boy Scouts was different....

The latrines at camp were outhouses, and the lids to the holes were constructed with a slightly forward lean -- this caused them to close whenever they were NOT being held up by someone sitting on the hole. The urinal was a metal trough.

1. Lift the lid, toss in a lit cherry bomb (a spherical firecracker about an inch in diameter). Drop the lid quickly. The resulting explosion will create a ring of...unpleasant material...on the bottom of the lid. Except, of course, that the bottom is what you leaned against when you sat....

2. Take a quart of homemade black powder, one with a bit too much charcoal in it. Pour it in the urinal. Run two wires from the gunpowder to a magneto outside the latrine. Wait about ten seconds after a gawky young boy scout enters the latrine. Crank the magneto. Watch the mushroom cloud effect from the flashing gunpowder pour out of the vents around the top of the latrine. Hear the boy scoout, covered with black dust and stumbling around with the pants about his knees, saying "The latrine blew up!" over and over.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Kim C
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 03:34 PM

The only things I ever did were, make forts out of large boxes, and sew little sleeping bags & things for my stuffed animals. When I was about 9, I slept with ALL my animals- about 22 of them. They each had their own certain place on the bed.

I have never been a practical joker myself, but I love to watch other people joke and be joked. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 03:46 PM

LOL! This thread has been a sheer delight, I must say...

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Tinker
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 03:50 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Kim C
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 04:02 PM

I did once try to make an ice cream sandwich of saltines and peppermint ice cream. It didn't work too well.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 04:39 PM

In my early teens, my 'room' was a spartan unheated studio over the garage. The outdoor stairway led to a covered porch and then to my room. We had three big cats at the time, but since my parents didn't want to leave windows or cat doors open into the house, the cats were fed in my bedroom. Feeding them was my chore, my gateway to a responsible life as an adult... One of the pains was removed from the door, and instantly, constant access was granted to our cats... 'Orange' (who we rescued from a filling station in Mendicino) 'Black' (who was running sideways banks off of the gravestones of the Mendicino cemetery) and 'Claude' (who was 22 pounds, and hung around alot).

All went well for a year or two, and then the troubles set in...

One night, when I was sound asleep, dreaming as I did of long 'powerslides' in perfect loam on my BSA Victor, with my feet 'on the pegs', I was rudely awakened by what sounded like a bar brawl a few feet from my bed. Shreiks, bowls bursting, knock down drag out kinds of body crashing sounds... and my heart pounding seemed even louder! I immediately sat bolt upright in bed, and turned my Longeines clock-radio-lamp light on to the ruckus... and the brawling stopped. Dead silence. 14 lamplit glowing eyes stared back at me with distain, and primal fear. After about twenty seconds of absolute stillness, where they watched me, and I stared back at them, all seven racoons made for the door... which, on account of the smallness of the window frame, and the largeness of the cat food stuffed racoons, could barely fit through one at a time... So, I still in bed, sat watching the seven racoons fight it out about who was going to get out first, and who..... might not ever get out...

This happened so regularly, that I eventually kept a small basket of golf balls by the bed, so I could burst forth and nail 'em as they sped for the door... I remember looking forward to the next encounter... and I occasionally did some warm-up practice throws right before going to sleep... ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 04:53 PM

LOL!!!

The night our whole brownstone went dark after I tried to wire up a manual alarm clock (the old metal kind with the pointy hands and rounded bells on top) to the house current using a plain kitchen fork!! My ma would have told me not to play McGiver (sp?) with her forks, but he hadn't been invented yet! :>) Here I thought I was really on to something, although I had no idea what!! Then there was the afternoon in Maine when I tried to persuade an old-fashioned two-tub clothes wringer, with an electrically powered roller pair between the tubs, to go the other way by pushing on the rollers with my very small fingers. My arm was through the wringer up to the shoulder by the time someone came down to let me out (thanks again, Ma!) and I have the scars on my shoulder to this day!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 05:04 PM

This only goes to prove what a boring and sheltered life I lead... Our idea of living dangerously was stepping too quickly over the dung channel in the milking parlour.... mind you, going too close behind Billy the Bull could be a challenge when he'd been out eating fresh grass all day....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 05:11 PM

I grew up four or five blocks away from the railroad tracks, near the edge of town. The Parker Pen plant property backed onto the railroad track and there was a dump where they put all the old pen barrels of discontinued models. A couple of friends and I loaded our pockets full one day and that evening, we had a bonfire in their back yard. We discovered that the pen barrels made brilliant colors when we burned them, so we put them on the end of sticks, and were swirling them around in the air, making beautiful patterna. Unfortunately, one of the barrels came off the end of the stick and flew onto the face of my friend. It lodged on his eyebrow, and was burning beautifully. My friend didn't appreciate the glorious colors, though and was hoping around like crazy until we knocked it off. This same kid caught his hair on fire when we were working by candlelight in close quarters (long before Michael Jackson.) But, none of that was as weird as the time we roasted dead rats on sticks over an open fire...

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: kendall
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 07:42 PM

We used to put lighted firecrackers in the neighbor's mailboxes. Helluva bang. When I was a boy we could buy fireworks. my nephew nearly blinded my niece with a Roman Candle. None of this was weird, but, maybe this was: There was a graveyard behind our house, and, I used to go there and read epitaphs looking for people my Uncle told me about. There was a WW1 soldier who didn't make it, and everytime I hear No Man's Land or The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, I think of him. He was married to my aunt who is still alive at 100 years. She never married again.

There is a family story; when I was 3, someone told me you could catch wild birds by sprinkling salt on their tails. I remember asking my mother for some salt, and she telling me she didn't have any. (She being in on the joke) So, I thern asked for an onion so I could squirt the juice into its eyes. True Story.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Neighmond
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 08:23 PM

We grew up in Ghetto apartments, and being in Iowa got much snow in the winter. My twin brother and several friends got the bright idea of jumping off of this mansard roof (flat on top and steeeeep slope on the second story) into the drifted bank to the north side of the building (was drifted close to 5 feet).
They collected themselves and discovered one of their number to be missing-we'll cal him "Junior". They looked and looked and came upon a Wile-Cyote looking hole in the snow.
Junior had sunk himself.
Turns out he was nearly six feet tall in fourth grade, and HEAVY!
We were all 4 feet something and 70 pounds or so.

They dug him out, and that was the end of the Valley-view snow jump.

Chaz

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: mack/misophist
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 09:43 PM

When I was a kid I breathed weird. My best friend was an 80 year old black woman. I killed and dressed fowl, took care of, harnessed, plowed with a span of mules.became the best damn chicken thief in Tarrant County, Texas. I fished in quicksand and hunted rattlesnakes for the bounty. I couldn't afford cherry bombs. I had insomnia and took so many 2 AM walks the police quit stopping me. It was OK.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: mack/misophist
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 10:16 PM

I forgot the thing that would impress you city folks. I stole horses; at least once a week in good weather. Of course I treated them well and put them back when I was done. The ones I took were retired and liked the attention. I never have had a saddle. Live oak trees were invented to help boys get on to horses. Only ever caught once. The man gave me a long cold look and said "I don't know your name but I know who does. Treat that horse well or the sheriff'll be at your door. I could walk 70 miles in a day back then. A horse is better.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Kim C
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 10:18 AM

Misophist, when I am sitting in traffic wasting gas, I sure wish I had a horse. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 11:31 AM

We used to play all sorts of practical jokes on adults. "Knocking down Ginger" - knocking on doors and running off was one of them. I tended to adopt a psychological approach - after knocking on the door, I'd run a short distance and then stroll along the road back towards the house. When an angry adult burst out, they'd ignore me and chase after my friends who were running off in the distance. Somtimes I'd even get asked "Was it those boys who knocked on my door ?", of course I could honestly answer "Yes, it was one of that gang".

Stretching a line or thread across the pavement (sidewalk) to trip people or knock hats off, was also quite fun. I found it much funnier doing it at dusk - without any line, but with myself and a friend pretending to be holding the ends of one. People would duck or even walk round us, and if anyone did take umbrage, you could say innocently "What string mister ?".

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 12:53 PM

This reminds me of the Hallowe'en trick my friends did in Scarboro. They knew where there was a blind curve on this small road, and they made a dummy, dressed up in jeans and so on, and layed it across the road after midnight, and hid behind the bushes. There was a thin rope tied to the dummy's pant leg, by the way.

Sure enough, after about five minutes along comes a car and drives right over the dummy, then screeches to a halt a short way down the road. The hiding kids instantly pull the dummy off the road, and one of them takes its place, sprawled across the road like a dead man. They had taken care to make two tire marks across his clothing beforehand...just for the full effect.

The driver of the car comes running back gasping, "Oh my God, Oh my God!"

Just as he reaches the "body", the kid gets to his feet, dusts off the tire marks, glares at the guy, and says "For Christ's sake will you watch where you're driving!" and stalks off without another word.

The driver was rendered more or less speechless. He eventually stumbled off to his car in a disoriented fashion and drove away, probably not noticing the howls of hilarity coming from the bushes, where the plotters had nearly blacked out try to suppress their laughter.

I have to give these guys credit for real initiative, imagination, and good planning.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: kendall
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 09:19 PM

LH. that is a great story!

So, has anyone ever filled a paper sack with cow dung, placed it on someone's forch, set it afire, rung the doorbell, then ran like hell?

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Neighmond
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 09:26 PM

yes

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 10:49 PM

So, has anyone ever filled a paper sack with cow dung, placed it on someone's porch, set it afire, rung the doorbell, then ran like hell?

Kendall, I have never done such a thing nor do I know of anyone personally who has. I grew up in the 'burbs and nothing like that ever took place..........Everyone I knew, myself included, used dog shit.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: JennyO
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:12 AM

Dave Bryant, your mention of the string reminds me of something I think I saw on Candid Camera years ago - some of their things were like childish pranks.

They tied a $5 note to a piece of string and laid it on the ground where people were walking by, to see who would try to pick it up. When someone reached down to grab it, they would jerk it away to see how far they would chase it. Some people REALLY wanted that money!

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: winterchild
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:54 AM

LOL!!

I think Jimbob and LittleHawk had the best stories.

Me, I was a _good_ (translate, boring) girl - oh, sure, I learned never to heat wax in a pan on the stove, and _NEVER_ to put it out with water ( I had to repaint the kitchen ceiling), and all about garter snakes (mom hated them) and knives (they cut you) and climbing trees(you can come down _very fast_), but I also did the thing with the 20 stuffed animals, and hated to see animals hurt.

_BUT_, I have a rather gross-but-funny story a friend told me about this cat he had, or at least which chose to live in his home. Seems that this cat liked to drink from his toilet, would get right up on the thing and put his head down in there. He also, briefly, had no back door, so he and the cat would come and go without notice.

Well, one night this friend came home after eating mexican, and he had this powerful need to hit the john. Half an hour before he even got home, he _really_ had to go, so when he got home, he made a beeline for the bathroom, didn't even put on the lights, slammed into the little boys room, and set loose without even sitting down properly.
Next thing he knows there's this explosion of screaming, stinky cat streaking out of the bathroom and out the back door. Poor thing never did drink from the toilet again, once it eventually started turning up at his place again, and it never did trust him....

WinterC

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 07:30 AM

Other things that come to mind:

A friend visiting for the first time. My brother fooling with a sheath knife. "Spread your fingers," he says to the guest. The guest does. THUNK! he throws the knife and sticks it in the wall between the fingers. For some reason the friend stayed a friend and even continued to visit.

The city took an island in the Mississippi River for a park, then forbade people from going there after dark. A railroad bridge crossed the river, the tracks ran across the island, and then across another bridge. We'd go to the Missouri side of the river, park the car, and walk back across the bridge. This doesn't sound like much, except to do so you had to climb down a ladder on the *outside* of the bridge, then swing onto a catwalk on the inside of the bridge and all the while you were about thirty feet above the river. At the island end you reversed the process. While on the catwalk you were between two steel walls with no light except that which reflected from the surface of the water -- since we couldn't use flashlights, we used the light from cigarettes to see by. One night we carried a bunch of fireworks and homemade "fireworks" to island, set cigarettes as time fuses, and were halfway back across the river when the commotion started. The police never did twig how we did it, I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Sam L
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 08:49 AM

Nobody ever believes we used to sneak a parents car out, throw it up on two wheels, see how far we could go. It's really easy to do, never turned one over. Some friends tried to get me to show them in a volvo wagon this past new year, but I declined. Being old enough to legally drive takes the fun out of it.

Nobody made the canons we did. Pringles chip can, duct taped to the mouth end of a cola can, punch a hole in the bottom. A tennis ball rolls in snug. Lighter fluid, skake, and light.

I was looking up a plastics mfg process on an engineering forum, but most questions got few replies. But the potato gun thread was 20 miles long, hot with debate and controversy. A very conservative engineer friend of mine confirms that blowing stuff up is the root of all engineering.

   We also used to sneak into lost river cave and try to find a connection to another cave behind the old mall. Recently found a book on the history of the cave, with interesting things like the James gang hid in it, and it was closed in the 1970's because of chemical pollutants in the river. Bout the time we were neck deep in it and using it for bong water. Guess I'm dead too.

   Never did anything with animals except get stoned with a little cat that never got very big.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Trevor
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 10:45 AM

Never mind when we were kids......
When I was runnning an outdoor pursuits centre in France we had a glut of various flavoured mousse powders. We also used regularly to confiscate bangers from guests. The mousse powder would be dumped into the hole in the local football pitch where the goalposts usually went, followed by a banger with the fuse lit and any other object which could be used as a projectile (golf ball, pebble, some kid's teddy etc). There would be a thud, said object would be fired into the night sky followed by a cloud of mousse powder which would ignite with a great flash, leaving a strawberry, chocolate or vanilla flavoured mushroom cloud. Mind you, I was only 41 at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: GUEST,BAILLIE
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 12:35 PM

I once prised the eletric plug from its socket in my bedroom with a pair of metal scissors and almost killed myself, not to mention fusing all the lights in the house! Also I used to experiment with gunpowder and tried to make a matchlock musket (thankfully I ran out of patience before I blew myself up. I also made a crossbow, and the breastplate for a suit of armour(I was into history!)

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: *daylia*
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 12:59 PM

Fred your car story reminds me of how we used to sneak into the neighbour's driveway at night, lift up their Volkswagen Bug and plonk it down in the middle of their front lawn.   We used to kill ourselves laughing imagining him scratching his head in the morning thinking "gee I didn't realize I was THAT drunk!"

20 years later, still living on the same street with the same neighbours (with whom I'm now on equal 'adult' footing), those memories are a real embarrassment!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: jimlad
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:27 PM

Dog crap on door handles was always good for a laugh. As was tying two adjacent doors together using a clothes line,then knocking on each door simultaneously.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Hollowfox
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:48 PM

Anything I ever did pales next to the exploits of my uncles. (They were four and six years older than me, and like brothers to me the @$#%s). On their parents fiftieth wedding anniversary, they started to confess some of their adventures. They han't even gotten through their high school years when it was so late that the banquet hall had to close for the night.
They were the ones who smuggled the skunk home, and wondered how their mother knew.
They were the ones who went out in the early spring to collect (hibernating) frogs. When they filled the bucket, they dumped the frogs in the kitchen sink and went out to get another bucketfull. When their parents got home, the boys asked what happened to their frogs. "What frogs?", said my grandparents. The frogs had, of course, awakened, and were trying to hide until they could escape. We were finding frogs, living and dead, for months after.
John (the older one) had (and has) a certain way about him. He's the one who shot the mouse in the basement. Just after we were done putting up a bumper crop of tomatoes. This was when he was a teenager. When he was an adult, he tried to put a jacket on a billy goat. He thought it was cold. He might have succeeded, but he was determined to have the buttons on the chest side of the goat, not the spine side. Neither he nor the goat were permanently damaged by this undertaking.
I could go on. Suffice it to say that my family takes a lot in stride. When I told my mother that I'd learned fire-eating, her only comment was to avoid doing it when I had the hiccups.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Deckman
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:51 PM

Trevor's posting got to me! I also need to FESS UP! All the stupid little pranks I did as a kid were just child's play compared to what I did (still do) as an adult. Like:

When I was in the Army and being 26, and 6 of us stole (borrowed) a real live locomotive, drove it five miles down the track, parked it and hiked back;

When I was being 36, a bunch of us picked up our bosses little tiny car, carried into the public works shop, and set it down, crosswise to his office door, and went home. As I was being the City carpenter, he called me at midnight and strongly suggested that I come to work and remove a wall so he could get his car out and drive home!;

When I installed a new office door for my paranoid boss. He was convinced that everyone was spying on him. I made sure that the entire crew had a new key for his office door;

When another boss got a brand new car and was bragging about the great mileage. I started sneaking out to the parking lot at noon and adding gas to his tank. Soon he was getting 50 and 60 miles to the gallon. Then, bastard that I am, I STOPPED! His mileage suddenly dropped to 20 MPG and he freaked out!;

Oh well, I think I've carried on enough for now. Besides I just got this GREAT IDEA and I gotta' go. CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Hollowfox
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 05:07 PM

Well, Bob, my grandfather (father of the aforementioned uncles) mentioned once how the dean of his college never did figure out who (plural) dismantled the Model T Ford and reassembled it in the dean's third floor office. Or who removed it the next night.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Deckman
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 05:47 PM

hollowfox ... was that perchance at Seattle Pathetic (Pacific) College, in Seattle, in the late 50's? If so, I think I was there also! Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Hollowfox
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 06:41 PM

Nope, Pennsylvania in the 1920's. *g*

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 06:44 PM

I highly recommend the book "Backyard Ballistics"...I can't have my copy long enough to read it, as my brothers and their children are passing it around! Spud guns, pringle can mortars, Cincinnati fire kites -- the works.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Socorro
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 07:35 PM

When I was about10, my parents had friends visiting who had 3 boys our age. We thought it'd be fun to go out in the neighborhood to spy on people and hopefully shoot them with our bean-shooters (hard straws thru which you blow small hard things like beans or popcorn).

Our street had an alley separating it from the street behind us, so we went back there and found neighbors having a get-together in their back yard.   We couldn't be seen thru the fence, so we let off a round of beans, and I think something may have gotten broken.
We didn't have time to really know, because they came tearing out after us!   We raced back into our own house, & sat down to innocently watch TV.
The neighbors were so angry they actually barged right in the house after us – which is the only thing that saved our little hides, because of course, OUR adults were so indignant at that, they saw what we had done as irrelevant – WHEW!

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: GUEST,Bill D (who forgot to reset his D*** cookie!
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 07:48 PM

...my father told of himself and several boys who got together on Halloween and disassembled a farmers buggy and re-assembled it on top of the shed....when they came by the next day to see it, the guy was staring at it, but asked the watching boys if he could hire them to get it down..

Dad said he always figured the farmer knew who put it up there.

he would also make little paper figures and attach a length of string to them, then chew some paper till it was sticky and toss them up to stick to the school room ceiling before class.......and of course, they would dry out and come fluttering down during class..

(now, this I consider a "good" prank, where no real damage is done and no one gets covered in shit....etc..unlike some of you delinquents! *grin*)

oh...and my Dad showed me how to fold paper water bombs, like he used to drop from school windows over the front walk.

(so...no one else ever made clothes pin match guns?)

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: GUEST,Bill D again
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 07:56 PM

just as I sent that, I realized...this is the WWW/internet!...so, off to Google..

Instructions

and diagrams

but they don't mention shooting lighted matches..

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 08:10 PM

Well, all this has really restored my faith in humanity in a big way... :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Art Thieme
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 08:52 PM

...and that's why I'm blind now !!!

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: jimlad
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 09:37 PM

As a 'sprog' of 9 or 10 years I and my gang,known as the Crumpsall Cream Cracker Cubs,once a year had a pea-shooter season.One Saturday during the 1949-50 season we went to our neighbourhood cinema for the Saturday morning 'penny-rush'.To our delight we saw some rows in front of us a Kid who's head was partly encased in a plaster-of-paris cast to restrict movement.The cast almost glowed in the flickering light.Obviously the poor buggers head became the only target in the place for our efforts I can still hear the drumming of 60mph peas on plaster-of-paris.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: jimlad
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 09:48 PM

My Granddad worked in the cotton mills of SE lancashire between the wars.Conditions were grim in all aspects of employment not least in the 'petties' ie toilets. The one frequented by granddad had 20 seats suspended over a porcelain channel down which water ran in a 6 minute cycle to remove the solids.
Granddads trick was to construct newspaper boats,set them on fire and release them at high tide.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Art Thieme
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 09:53 PM

Stickin that icicle up the beaver's ass to make an impromptu chainsaw was just about the stangest we ever did ! Unless it was that time... (see recent tall tale thread.)

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: JennyO
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 01:26 AM

We weren't really kids any more, but at a camp, some of my boyfriend's (at the time) "friends" went out in the middle of the night and picked up his little car and placed it between two trees. Fortunately he had a sense of humour. I had a good photo of it but lost it (Rats!)

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 03:07 AM

Well, a friend scored a fairly large Briggs and Stratton motor at a garage sale and brought it home... and a bunch of us just happened to stop by... After about an hour of tinkering and swearing, pulling the starter cord till all our right arms hurt, and some left arms too... changing sparkplugs, cleaning out the carb, the old thing roared to life! All of us got real antsy, and the six pack didn't help,... we found an old hulk of a golf cart out back, and set to work. The rear axle was frozen, so we got the cutting torch out and tore that sucker off faster than any of you could down a beer... fixed it up with a welded on non removable sproket, a brand new rusty as hell heavier dutier rear axle with plumbing pipe for bushings. We looked and pondered at the single front wheel, and if it hadn't o been gettin dark, I'm sure we would've fixed up a nice little rack-n-pinnion, 'cause the thing would tip and drag it's gunnel during hard cornering... Anyway, It was about ten o'clock when we were all goose-bumpy hunkered over this thing, pushing it out the drive way to the dirt parking lot across the street where much extranious R&D has happened through the years... It started on the third pull, and the helmet was ready, but we just looked at each other... and I was handed the helmet. I did'nt reach for it mind you... It was silently confirmed with nods and smiles, and then they backed away all expectant like! Well, I put on the helmet, and sat down in the strangely comfortable bucket seat we had draged out of obscurity... which was securely wired into place... and pressed the make-shift throttle ever so gently... and the centrifical clutch started to catch real easy like... and I just putted around like that... dragging the gunnels around the corners at 4-5 MPH to the delite of all of us. So, after going around the lot once, I decided it was time to get "RAD!" So, I hammered the throttle and held on, as the sport disability vehicle fishtailed eratically and hurtled forward at quite an alarming rate! Alarming too, was the way the throttle stuck wide open. Bummer. I was headed for the biggest, and most ancient blackberry patches at a speed unthinkable, and "there is this small matter of the single front wheel"... and I'm going about 30 MPH, and about 5 inches off the ground... and it's not a very well lit spot. Well, I turned hard left, and leaned, and prayed... still gaining speed... and the thing did not turn at all... we're talking beeline here... when my prayers were answered. The front wheel broke completely off, and I skidded to a halt about a foot from the blackberries, and the engine stalled. Whew! To this day I wonder what those blackberries were growing over... Cheers! ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Trevor
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 04:51 AM

I remember when we did that thing at school where you whack electricity through water and produce hydrogen and oxygen (is it electrolysis?), using a piece of kit with two glass tubes. I thought it was brilliant so when I got home I wired a short piece of flex up to a plug, bared both ends of the wires, covered them with tin foil and stuck them in a pyrex bowl full of water. I was so chuffed with the little bubbles coming from the ends of the flex and was trying to figure out how to collect the hydrogen so that I could make a bang like the physics teacher had. I heard Mum coming in and the eleven year old boy instinct that I was on course for a bollocking kicked in so I switched off. God knows what would have happened if I'd carried on - fried Trev maybe. And the circuits didn't fuse either.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 07:56 AM

As mains current is AC, you'd have probably been producing a mixture of Oxygen and Hydrogen at each electrode in just the right proportions to recombine back to water (or rather steam) very violently. Assuming that you were in the UK, the voltage would have been 230v (not the piddling 115v they use over the ditch) so I think that you were lucky that your mum did turn up - and that you kept those electrodes far enough apart to prevent the resistance becoming too low. I expect your teacher used about 6v DC, although it's usual to add something to the water to lower it's resistance.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 08:00 AM

When I worked in a small town in Ohio, it was reported that:

--the eighth grade boys disassembled the cannon in the park one Halloween and reassembled it in the office of the school prinicpal. He arrived to find himself staring into the muzzle. He made those responsible disassemble in again, remove it the same way they got it into the building (via the fire escape), and reassemble it in the park where it belonged.

--some young bucks, returning from the sin-filled city of Cleveland one night, loaded the same cannon with blasting powder and a wad of paper, and fired a long, slow fuse. They were all in bed when, at 2 a.m., it went off with a roar that woke the town.

--the local National Guard used to fire the cannon to celebrate the 4th of July. One holiday, when the crowd was focused on the cannon, a local fella fired off a stick of dynamite at the other end of the park immediately after the cannon fired. Rumor had it that, where the crowd had been, the grass thereafter grew much greener than elsewhere in the park.

That poor old cannon is still there, a veteran of the Civil War battle of Lookout Mountain.

BTW, these events happened in the 1890 - 1900 period....

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: HuwG
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 08:14 AM

Dave Bryant, quite correct; you generally add a small amount of salt (NaCl, sodium chloride), which does reduce the resistance. If you add a lot of salt, as I did when performing this experiment at school, you get chlorine rather than oxygen at the anode. And yes, you get chlorine and hydrogen in exactly the right proportions to create hydrochloric acid, with a heck of a bang, when you toss a lighted taper into the glass jar in which you have collected both gasses.


Not really part of my childhood, but I have this knack for making laboratories uninhabitable. Years later, when studying Mining Geology at University, I was testing for a mineral named "Pyrrhotite", an important ore of nickel. The test notes said, "Add sulphuric acid to powdered sample". I poured half a pint of acid over several ounces of pure pyrrhotite, and turned the page to read, "If pyrrhotite is present in significant quantities, copious volumes of H2S are evolved". H2S is of course, sulphuretted hydrogen, the very poisonous gas which produces the awful "rotten eggs" smell.

Years ago, my father managed to coat the inside of a lab at Durham University with bakelite, which had to be laboriously removed over several days from benches, sinks, gas taps, plug sockets, lights etc. He refused to tell me quite how, in case I was tempted to repeat the experiment.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 12:00 PM

I remember when we had to do "Qualative Ananlysis" at school. The method of testing for and extracting any heavy metals in the sample was to bubble H2S through it from a Kipps apparatus. I once sneezed doing it and managed to knock the whole Kipps through the front of the fume cabinet and on to the floor. I was made to clean up the mess while the rest of the class evacuated the lab.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 12:21 PM

Eat my mother's ashes. No, not like Kenny on South Park - the ashes left from her cigarettes. Ate them right out of the ashtray, left the butts. Never did figure out why...

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 02:30 PM

Never, ever mix chlorine bleach and ammonia solution. You can evacuate a car, a house, even an entire farm field. I speak from the experience of one who couldn't stop with just evacuating a car.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: jimlad
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 03:44 PM

When my son was at Uni' some jokers completely emptied a guys room and laid turf in there.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Hollowfox
Date: 25 Jan 03 - 09:48 AM

I must be nuts. I showed this thread to my teenagers.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jan 03 - 09:57 AM

LOL!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Neighmond
Date: 25 Jan 03 - 11:39 PM

Rapaire? Was that Quincippi Island In Quincy?

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Jan 03 - 02:22 PM

Neighmond, that's what they call it now. Back then, it was call Bay Island. The park was Bay Island Park, but it could hardly be called "developed."

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: winterchild
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 12:59 AM

LOL!!

You guys are DANgerous!

The worst I ever did was knock myself on the head with home-made slings and with those things they use in South America to tangle running animals' legs. Suddenly (retroactive reaction to those head-knocks?) can't remember what they're called.

WinterC

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Neighmond
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 03:41 AM

Winterchild, had you any relatives in NW IA?

I had a quasi-friend named Shawn Currans, in Spirit Lake. He was little and the big kids used to slap hell out of him because he was a smart mouth, and he threw snowballs at their cars.

He dug up a pair of panty hose, which he stuffed one leg inside the other, inserted a golf ball, and tied the whole mess shut just over the ball and again at the top. He started to sneak up on kids and whack them senseless with this "sock-socker" (gospel truth-that's what he called it!) He would then turn tail while they were stunned and run to beat hell. One time I was coming out of the library and saw him winding up his toy behind one of the Elditsons(which one? Too many that looked alike to tell-all of them were mean, but would leave you alone for a month or so if you did them a good turn)I was about to yell, and Shawn let fly, only he had screwed his OWN aim up! This thing wrapped around his upraised arm and in due course thumped him a hell of a good one to the side of his face and laid him cold.
Elditson and I called his dad, thinking he would get into some big trouble, and his dad said "If the kid's so damn stupid he took that thing on Hill Avenue (the main drag) he can just lay there." He laid there for a good 20 minutes untill the lady in the theater came out and told him to keep on walking. Last time we saw the "sock-socker"...


FWIW
CHAZ

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: winterchild
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 03:20 PM

LOL!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Deckman
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 03:53 PM

Hey Mrrzy! That's a fairly common event and the reason is well known in medicine. It has to do with a mineral deficiency. It's also quite common to see children sucking on the burnt end of used matched. Somehow youngsters seem to know how to satisfy their cravings! Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: BusbitterfraeScotland
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 01:16 AM

When I was a child at school, I used to play a game where you lay in the middle of the raod and then wait for a bus, when you saw the bus you then got up and ran across to the pavement.
I did this game one summer's day and I fell asleep, when I woke up there I saw a big blue bus behind me.
Well, I got up and ran across the road to the pavement and the bus driver never got the game that we were palying, the teacher told us not to do it again.
I'll never forgive that bastard Bus driver for spoiling our game.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Schantieman
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:02 AM

Bolas

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: mike the knife
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 02:16 PM

At the tender age of 20 or so, my roommate & I spent an afternoon shooting M80's (big, ugly firecrackers that will remove a finger) with a slingshot out of our 2nd story kitchen window. Not content to let them explode on the ground, we took turns holding the lit M80 in the slingshot- the intention being to see who could make the damned things explode just outside the window. And we did. I forget which of us it was who had one go off *just* outside the window- resulting in a badly ringing head & a kitchen that smelled of cordite for a couple of days. The same roommate & I had a drinking game that involved an axe. Bad idea. I won't go into the details. In the neighborhood I grew up in, we played "Stuntman"- taking turns falling/jumping off of the top of a friend's swing set- trying to see who could come up with the most dramatic falls/landings. We caught snakes (in Cottonmouth & Copperhead country) & played in an old abandoned sawmill. We shot each other with BB guns. We paddled around in old dry-rotted, leaky rowboats. We blew things up (big things). We played "catch" with a big old rusty Bowie knife we found in a shed. Jeez, it's a miracle any of us made it to 18.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 03:04 PM

Oh, lord, knives! As Boy Scouts we were forbidden sheath knives -- some sort of rumor about a kid who'd cut off his hand or something. But then again, "Stretch" was an intriguing game to play while camping...two guys face each other, and you toss a knive; if it sticks the other guy has to stretch his legs to wherever the knive stuck. The winner sticks the knife where the other guy can't stretch to.

Like up in a tree. In the campfire (if you're using the other guy's knife).

But using pocket knives made this boring. So we used hand axes (hatchets)...

And even that got boring, so we started playing "In Between": start with your legs spread and work inward, until the gap between the feet is so small the other guy chickens out.

But using pocket knives made this boring. So we used hand axes (hatchets)...

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 03:24 PM

My friends and I did the sock thing...but not to do real damage. We would roll up one long sock into a tight ball, put it down in the toe of the other long sock, and use the resulting hand weapons, which we called "K'bops", to battle each other with. This was a lot of fun, and required speed, stamina, and agility. If you got hit solidly in the leg, then you had a "wounded leg" and had to limp. If your disengaged arm got hit, you had a wounded arm. The ultimate objective was to nail the other guy in the head, of course, but it usually wasn't too easy. I was the guy who came up with the K'bop idea, and it remained popular with me and my friends for many years afterwards.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Neighmond
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 07:44 PM

Well, Little Hawk, that's what any NORMAL people would do. But none of the Currans' never got accused of being "normal". We used socks stuck full of flower-it left a white "splatter" if you got hit. It took the dedicated brain of a veteran moron to find a way to really spoil the fun.

FWIW
Chaz

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:02 PM

Must have made an awful mess...

Did you ever try it in the rain?

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Neighmond
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:05 PM

Not a lick! My mother would have performed a killing had we pulled such a stunt! Dry was a dust issue but wet was a burn issue....as in the burning of the southern climate after it collided with the Armstrong express.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:27 PM

Ah! Reminds me of the time Cutler's boys hijacked a Union supply train and sent it back empty and unmanned down the grade into Harper's Ferry. It collided with a Union ammo train coming out the other way. Hell of a bang! Too bad that bastard Sherman hadn't of been the engineer on the outbound train. I am still peeved that even with pulling off stunts like this, we went and lost the danged war for Virginia. There was just too many damned Yankees.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Neighmond
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:44 PM

For what it's worth

There were people in the 1960's that swore they were stopped at a crossing by a train that turned up to be Lincoln's funeral train.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 11:15 PM

Yes, I've heard of that. A time shift? Or a parallel event in the great matrix? There are also some strange parallels between the deaths of Kennedy and Lincoln, plus the struggle to free the blacks, which was a key factor in both administrations. Mysterious, ain't it?

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 09:14 AM

You guys shoulda had seal repellent bombs -- thing tubes about a quarter the length of a dynamite stick, used in the days of the tuna fishing fleet to keep seals away from the nets at work. Thing was they would burn under water. Friend of mine wandered down the boardwalk at Belmont Park in the old days, wandered into one of those beach front men's rooms and found a bunch of layabouts in there shooting dice. So he goes around them into the utilitarian toilet stall, takes a leak and then drops a lit seal bomb into the toilet without flushing it.

He walks out and joins his buddy on the boardwalk. Thirty seconds later there is this horrific KABOOOOOOOM!! and the dice players come running out of the men's room, water in their hair and clothes.

"My Gawd!!" shouted one, "Someone blew up the COMMODE!".

My friend strolled into the men's room and discovered there was nothing but a hole left of the toilet. I suppose he's lucky there was a steel stall around it to contain the shrapnel. He went out again and the two boys walked away very slow and normal like, just as the cops came running up. But they weren't even stopped.

He cracks up about that to this day.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: winterchild
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 12:01 AM

LOL!!
amazing the things we get away with!

Mick the Knife said "We played "catch" with a big old rusty Bowie knife we found in a shed. Jeez, it's a miracle any of us made it to 18." Boy, you got that right! When I think of some of the fool stunts I pulled... (I used to love to climb up on top of things... walls, barns, houses, etc. And loved to make primitive weapons, then try them out. Glad I never actually killed anything with 'em!)

Schiantieman reminds me that the leg-tanglers are "Bolas"; thanks, I'd lost that one in the static in my attic!

Just got back from Poland, but had a trace on this thread, thankfully!

WinterChild

Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
From: Socorro
Date: 02 Mar 03 - 09:26 PM

I forgot this one - when my sister & I were about 6 & 7 yrs old, we developed a craving for match-heads. We used to wait until my parents were asleep, then sneak into the front room to eat them (maybe we had a sulphur deficiency??)