Thread: When I Was a Child, I - . . . What Crazy Thing Did You Do?

I can think of some things I did as a child, that's just crazy. Just shows you the mind of a child is so innocent.

1. Another kid stuck his finger in the stapler I was using on the desk. I asked him to move his finger or I would staple it. He didn't, so I stapled it. He went crying to the teacher with a staple through his finger. I think we were in 4th grade at the time.

2. We were visiting my dad and his new wife and she had beautiful expensive-looking stationery on her antique desk. I stole a few sheets of it and put it in my bag, (I loved paper and writing even then. Computers didn't exist, except perhaps in military). Later when my sister was looking for something, everyone noticed the beautiful blue stationery in my things. It was obvious I had stolen it. I was embarrassed. My dad's wife pulled me aside later and politely scolded me.

3. My mom bought Dixie cups (do you know what those are?) and put them in the freezer. Told us (me and my 3 sibs) to take a nap first. She took a nap, too. I got up while everyone was asleep and couldn't wait. I knew I couldn't bite on one, so I sucked on a couple of them just to get the sweet flavor. I remember closing the freezer door, lying down, but getting up again to suck some more. I guess I sucked on them enough for her to notice later. I remember her later asking, "Who's been sucking on these Dixie cups?" Somehow she figured out it was me.

And I was a good child, really.

The father of a friend of mine was a heavy equipment operator. One night after a scout meeting we discovered a D4 tractor parked near the scout hut. The city was doing some maintenance work on the park near the small craft harbour. They were using the Cat to rebuild a sports playing field close to the hut. My friend said he knew how to start the D4. I dared him to do it. He did and said he would teach me to drive it. We went joy riding down the beach, staying near the water where the sand was packed better, until we saw flashing red lights (no blue lights in those days) on a patrol car driving slow along U.S. 90. We were bogging down anyway so we shut down the D4 and ran for it. We were both 12 at the time.

Crossing the river Thames by climbing the girders beneath Battersea bridge when I was 10 in 1955... We used to live on one of the houseboats at the left edge of the frame; in 1956 it was a cheap place to rent, they were mostly converted LCPs (Landing craft - personnel); now it's very trendy and very expensive.


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Great confessions. Can't get in trouble now!

I think there's humor in that adults ask children, "what were you thinking?"

But that's just it, when you're a child, you're not thinking, you just doing. You're just absorbing from experience.

Thanks for sharing.
Jaé D.

I enjoyed all your stories!

I'm not so sure it was crazy, but... I lived in a crowded neighbourhood as a kid, and I could see into the backyard of one of our neighbours. They had a picnic table set infront of a swing set with no swings. There were a ton of kids jumping from the picnic table to the swing set like it was a gymnatics bar, spinning around it with no fear. I told my mom to come and take a look. I can still remember telling her how stupid those kids were because they were going to get hurt. She agreed. I was outside playing the next day, and low and behold I was invited to play in that very backyard with the swingset. I eagerly climbed up onto the table and jumped for the swingset... my grip slipped and I fell backwards and landed on my arm... I broke it in two places. I was 10 years old at the time. You're right Jaé D... kids just do stuff without thinking!

I did some pretty nuts things. My brothers and I used to hang out in the back yard of this one girl across the street, and her mom had this flower garden, the dirt all churned up and easy to grab. I used to wait till bees landed on the flowers, then I dropped dirt on them to pin them. Once they'd just wriggled to the surface, I'd grab them by their backs and drop them in a jar, where they joined about thirty other bees. Then I brought the jar to show-and-tell at school. I don't remember getting into trouble; we had a pretty easy going teacher. That was Grade 3? Almost all of them were dead by the time, even though I'd considerately punched air holes in the tin lid and I think dropped ants in for food. That was before I knew bees drank nectar.

When I was three, I went camping with my parents, and was out on the lake with my dad. My parents was fishing with crickets. I managed to get a hold of the cricket cage, and set them loose. So there were about two or three dozen crickets crawling all around the canoe.

When I was about five or six, I was riding my bike around the driveway, and often did crazy things. I once let go of the handlebars and stuck my feet out. Somehow, my feet got caught in the spokes of the front wheel. I went flying ten feet in the air and landed, belly first on gravel, nine feet away from where I was launched. My bike landed just inches from my face.

One for my best friend: I got a go-cart a few months before my sophomore year in high school started. And exactly two weeks before the year started, my best friend was driving it. He managed to drift on the lawn, but I missed it, so he did it again so I could see. He came down the hill in the yard, and started drifting too early when he hit the driveway, which back then had a lump in the middle before my dad covered it with more gravel. He hit the lump in when he started to drift, landed, and then flipped two and a half times. The right side of the roll cage bent inward and cracked at the bolt. My friend's hands were flailing around, and he broke his upper right arm, the doctors called it a spiral fracture. Because we didn't have a helmet until the day after (how convenient?), he hit his head on the bolt where the roll cage broke, and received a nasty gash just above his right temple. There was no brain damage. As we were taking him to the hospital, he jokingly asked, "Are my brains sticking out?" He needed four stitches, was in a cast for about two months, and the go-cart never worked again. One good thing about the whole incident: he fixed the front right wheel that my brother bent by crashing into a rock wall. I cleaned the blood off the go-cart for about an hour, but still couldn't get some of it out of the foam on the roll cage. Just before graduation, a few of my friends offered to come over and help fix it, since they're rednecks, they kind of know all about fixing vehicles. But, as fortune would have it, my dad sold it to someone who said he could fix it without the consent of myself or my brother.

My best friend and I mooned people from a garage roof-top once!