BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid

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