BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: *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: 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: 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: 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