BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Neighmond
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 09:26 PM

yes

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Tinker
Date: 21 Jan 03 - 03:50 PM

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: 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: 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: 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: *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: 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: 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: *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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: *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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 05:11 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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