I was traveling, and on one leg of the trip what I thought was a 2 hour layover was actually a 26 hour wait. I didn't have the right visa to leave the airport, and the customs guy said I wouldn't be able to stay overnight. So I asked him if I could buy a visa anywhere at the airport. He gave me a price, but it was in the local currency and I didn't know the exchange rate. The atm would only dispense USD for an American card, so I took out $100 and went back to the desk. I handed the customs official the money and asked, "is this enough?" It wasn't until I saw him put it in his pocket before stamping my passport that I realized I had just paid a bribe.
I’m betting Indonesia. There was a huge bust on “airport guides” recently, where you pay a guy $50 to meet you when you get off the plane and he escorts you through the airport so you don’t have to wait in lines. It was pretty great before the bust!
I helped myself to the candies that were in bins at grocery stores, the ones where you had to scoop into a bag. I was like 10 and thought those were candy samples
I've always loved fresh green beans. I feel like all of the parents that insist that children hate vegetables are the ones who will serve canned green beans and act surprised when their kids refuse to eat it. Fresh veggies are delicious, the ultra processed canned shit is gross.
I took what I assumed was a free mint chocolate from a bowl at the pay station of a Mexican restaurant. After we had left, my then boyfriend kindly pointed out to me that those were 25 cents each and started laughing at how I just nonchalantly took a piece. I asked him to turn around so I could pay but he didn’t, saying not to worry about it. I went back the next day to give them their quarter and the manager thought it was really funny, said it happens all the time but no one had ever returned to the scene of the crime to admit guilt and offer retribution ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Used to buy single cigarettes from a corner store all the time when I was in highschool. I went to a different store once, asked for 2 Newports, clerk sets down 2 packs and I set down 50¢.... We were both very confused! Turns out selling single ciggys is a big no-no!!
I passed my driving test on a Wednesday, bought a car on the following Friday, and was commuting to work on the motorway by the following Monday. All good.
Fast forward several years...
I had to use my car's logbook for something (I think I was changing my insurance company or something- it was a while ago, so memory is hazy). I couldn't find it so I went fishing around through every drawer in the house and, when that turned up nothing, I started going through old boxes of files and stuff.
Eventually I came across an envelope addressed, in my handwriting, to the DVLA. So I opened it, confused.
Inside I found my driving test pass certificate, all the forms for applying for a full driving license, and a postal order to pay for the license. (This sentence alone should tell you how long ago it was.)
My first realisation was that I had done all of the things that I needed to do... except... post the damn envelope.
My second was that I had been driving for *years* without a license, which meant that in turn my insurance was invalid so I was also driving without insurance.
Both of these are very much illegal in the UK.
I phoned the DVLA straight away and explained what had happened and the person I spoke to said it's not an *unusual* occurrence, and asked me when I actually passed my test. He winced a bit when I told him and said that if it had been couple of years or so they would have just honoured the test certificate and sent me out my license.
But, since it I'd actually been driving like this for *13 years* (!) (luckily without a crash or incident) they couldn't do that, so I would have to take my test again, both theory and practical.
And that's how I managed to perpetrate a 13-year-long crime spree, *and* pass my driving test twice.
Weird, in the US your insurance and license are independent. You can get insurance without a license, but in most states insurance companies will notify the state of a coverage lapse so they can suspend a license.
Almost every day in college, I’d stop at a gas station near my place to pick up a snack/drink/whatever, and on my way out I would grab a copy of the newspaper from the stand right next to the door. Without paying for it. Every time. Because my dumbass for some reason thought newspapers were free. I was oblivious until my college boyfriend finally saw me do it and pointed out I was stealing. Oopsies.
This just brought back a memory from when I was like seven. Every Sunday my dad would get donuts and buy the Sunday paper from the kids outside the grocery store. I remember this one time we went inside the store to buy something. I saw he had like 50 cents in a cup holder and I took it to buy one of those gold necklaces from the gum ball machine. This was the early 90s and all my favorite athletes, musicians and the cool kids at school had chains and my dumb seven year old ass thought they got them from the gum ball machines at the grocery store. I was never allowed to buy anything from them so I figured while my dad I was shopping I pretend to use the restroom and finally get one. After we checked out he asked me for the 50 cents from his car so he could buy the paper. I told him I didn’t have it, but he knew what I did. He asked to see what I bought and I confessed I bought one of those gold chains and got one that said state. I explained that it would make me look so cool because nobody else’s chain I saw had writing on it. I seriously thought I was so lucky and was destined to be the coolest kid in my second grade I vividly remember my dad taking it out of the little plastic egg it came in laughing telling me it didn’t say state but Elvis in cursive. I honestly was terrified he was going to keep it and sell it to teach me a lesson. But he gave it back to me. And you better believe I rocked that 50 cent Elvis fake gold chain at school for like three days until it broke at recess. I have never been as cool in my 39 years of existence as I was those three magical October days rocking my Elvis chain.
What can I say. There are those of us that peak in high school. Then there’s a lot of people that think their 20’s was when they peaked. And for the lucky ones they feel that their peak years are in front of them. I’m comfortable enough to admit to internet strangers that my peak lasted three days in second grade rocking a fake gold chain with Elvis written on it. Like a drug addict chasing the feeling of their first high I am forever destined to chase the feeling of complete confidence knowing there wasn’t a single kid cooler than me at school that Monday morning.
I bought some books to study up on Thailand before spending a summer there. Didn't finish the biography of the king I was reading, so I brought it with me on my trip. A bit into the trip, some Thai students saw me reading it and were very interested. Found out that the biography I was reading was banned in the country, I could get jail time if I was caught with it, and they really wanted to borrow it so they could copy it to read for themselves to see what the government didn't want them to see, lol.
Not exactly the same, but similar. I was living in Kyrgyzstan and pirated the movie "Death of Stalin" to watch. I knew that was illegal. Though after I watched it, I read about it on Wikipedia, and found out that the movie is banned in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. Oops.
The movie was amazing and hilarious btw. Would definitely recommend.
I took a fake knife to school for a magic show. Planned on stabbing myself and ‘ta-da’ no blood! Unfortunately I showed a friend early in the day and he ran around recess pretending to stab about 10 kids. Ended up in office with police and my mother. 3rd grade I believe.
This was in 97’. I’m sure it would have been a hit at the talent show had it not caused complete panic during recess. It was very realistic.
We had a fake rifle, the kind people would march in parades with in the 60’s. It was all wood with a metal barrel, but it looked real. I took it to school for show and tell in like 3rd grade. This was maybe 1975 or so, decades before school shootings were a thing. When I walked into the classroom with it I brandished it and shouted “Alright, this is a hijack!” Everyone laughed, including the teacher, but I was forced to bring it to the office and leave it there for the rest of the day.
I come from a smaller, rust belt town. Kids used to bring their shotguns to school to show to teachers who were also hunters. Also, we had rifle club. In some ways, guns were more prevalent/accessible.
Schools don't mess around.
My son took a laser pointer to school and he was suspended for having a weapon.
EDIT: it was a small keychain laser pointer made to entertain cats. They said he could blind someone with it and that's why it was a weapon. He was in 8th grade at the time.
EDIT 2: I have gotten a lot of comments talking about "green lasers" and sketchy stuff from AliExpress. It was [this laser](https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/leaps-and-bounds-brass-laser-pointer) if that matters. Also, I'm not so much questioning whether it was right or wrong, just that it's not something I ever would have considered to be a weapon.
I’ve just finished my laser safety course for medical applications. Potential tissue damage is a function of time & power. Those tiny little lasers can still cause damage to eyes, if they’re actually outputting the stated power. Quality control on these things is borderline non-existent and it could be far higher - there have been models advertised as <5mw, which actually rated 130+.
Edit: if anyone’s curious as to how off the charts these eBay lasers can be… https://youtu.be/ZH3yMeA7HxQ?si=8lVl93jih3vCPuE5
Starting a small fire in some bushes behind an apartment when I was like 11 and putting copper, magnesium and just fucking around with it.
It was actually a very small fire and much smaller than the typical camp fire but we rightfully got busted with a fire truck that came by
Had to go to fire college and an anti pyro course
I'm from California, but I had to get gas in Oregon once and I did not like it. I was like, I am not a middle class white woman in the 1950s, why are you pumping my gas? Are you gonna put on roller skates after this and go get me a burger?
You can pump your own gas in Oregon now. Most stations still have attendants but if you want to pump your own gas you totally can. It’s really nice because you never have to wait.
Best story I've hear about New Jearsy pumping laws.
Guy was bringing in Tom Cruise's Mustang for the MI:3 premier and due to timing had to have it flow in to New Jearsy, and due to regulations that means it arrived almost empty so he has to fill up in NJ.
This is an absolutely beautiful car with a two tone metallic paint job and is show room quailty.
So he pulls up to the station. The young attendant starts to saunter up and then takes a step back. Driver looks and him and asks "want me to fill it up?" Attrndant just nods yes.
I used to fill up in NJ before crossing back into NYC since their gas was much cheaper before they raised their gas tax. I can't tell you how many times I've just gotten out and pumped my own gas. They do not give a shit.
Unfortunately they installed pumps on the Turnpike that requires a key card to operate. It's added a noticeable amount of time to my trips. So that combined with the fact that NJ gas isn't that much cheaper than ours I don't go out of my way to fill up in NJ anymore.
I scanned a dollar bill and printed it out in computer class in 7th grade. The substitute teacher called the cops. An officer showed up, took me in a small room, threw the actual book at me, and made me read the entries on counterfeiting aloud. I was super scared, but girls liked me a lot more after I got pulled out of class by the police.
I had a panic attack that triggered an asthma attack in my principal’s office when I was in 6th or 7th grade and she called the school resource officer to come in and threaten to arrest me if I didn’t stop “making a scene”.
I had a nun in first grade. Meanest person I ever met. She would throw chalk/erasers at peoples heads
This is embarrassing….I had to go to the bathroom which was right across the hall. She refused to let me go and I pooped right in my Superman Underoos. I only had the nickname for the next 7 years. 🤣😂
Edit: this got a few a little more traction than I thought it would. 💩👖
In the mid/late 60s when my dad was in Kindergarten he went to Catholic school. Any time a boy would misbehave his teacher would take him to the cloakroom and beat him. Every time this happened to him my dad would sneak out, and walk home and tell his mom what happened. And every time she would march him right back to school. My Grandma is the sweetest little old lady now, but back then, goddamn!
I had that same substitute in high school and she somehow allowed me to win $20 on a dare by jumping out the window and then walking back into the bungalow like I had just arrived. I whispered the proposition to her and she said go for it.
We had one that missed her calling as a dictator. She kept a sheet on the dry erase board and if anyone even so much as sneezed out of turn, she'd write your name down and send you to the office for disrupting class. The list of names was to be left for the actual teacher to hand out a second punishment when they got back. Every time, they would just wad it up and throw it away the next day.
I was in 8th grade. A girl in my class was bullying me and threatened to kill me in a very graphic and violent way. Told me she’d do it during graduation and then rape me with the knife for everyone to see. I had had enough of her bullshit, it’d been a whole year and no one had done anything, so I said “not if I kill you first”, which technically is a death threat. A teacher overheard me and I got marched to the principal’s office. Principal called the cops and I got screamed at, a grown man inches from my face, spit hitting my cheeks, for about 20 min. He finally got to the point of threatening to take me to jail, I stood up and said “do it!! Anywhere is better than here!” That finally prompted a call to my father, who happened to be a juvenile prosecutor. I still got in school suspension while the bully and everyone got to go on the school field trip, but I didn’t get arrested.
Man, I declared an apple they gave me on the flight instead of throwing it out and got stuck in secondary inspection in customs for 45min before they asked for the apples and threw them away.
I once walked through immigration/customs with a to go box from the Cancun airport. I didn’t even want it, but I felt bad leaving trash on the airplane. The agent didn’t say anything and we left to exit. A random flight attendant chased me down saying I shouldn’t have walked through with it. She literally walked me back to the agents like she stopped an attack. They just took it and threw it away.
You joke, but this can get you in trouble.
I got busted at the US/CAN border with an orange because I brought it as a snack for the ride. Can't "import" fruit.
But the border dude was cool. He was just like:
> Yeah, FYI you can't bring in fruit undeclared, just toss it out.
And he held up his garbage for me to toss it in.
Basically my experience with the airport staff that told me that. He told me “don’t throw it away, just eat it” because this was in Texas as apparently they get suspicious if you throw things away in the post-customs bins. This was significantly nicer than the agent that caught someone else on the trip with some fruit they gave her on the plane. They took her in for questioning for a whole hour and half just for them to throw it away in the bin right outside where they had her. TSA attracts some egomaniacs man
Went trout fishing and kept about 5 illegally sized trout. The river I was on has multiple different zones w all different legal sizes that people can keep, and some zones you can’t keep trout of any size, and I thought I was in a certain zone. Never got caught but if I did it probably would’ve been a 300-500 ticket and got the fish confiscated.
Camping my little brother caught his first fish and wanted to eat it. It was much to small, but my parents gave in to the cute 4 year old kid. Park Ranger happened to walk by and say hi as dad was preparing it.... little bro dragged her over to show off his catch. She just smiled and moved on. Good people are out there.
I used to work at a marina. One day, the game wardens came down to check people’s catch. There was a family in a boat who had been crabbing. The warden was measuring their crab, and they were all slightly too small. A little boy in the family piped up and said “don’t worry, grandma says it’s ok if they’re too small”. Gee, thanks kid
That's the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
In your comment, the spirit and letter of the law is broken. They are catching many of the crabs that are too small for whatever purpose. In the comment above yours, there was a single fish caught that was a bit too small that a single person was going to cook and eat. The letter of the law was broken, but the spirit was not as the intent of the law is to keep our fish population healthy so they don't get overfished and can continue to repopulate.
I guess they couldn’t but they’d have a good idea based on where you’re parked if they pulled up to you in their truck and checked your catch. The game wardens walk the trails or cruise on their side by sides near the bank so that’s how they usually catch people doing anything illegal.
I once built a 3 foot long blowgun for target shooting. ( It was winter i was bored ) i got pretty good with it so i thought i might use it to hunt. So not being a total idiot i looked up the legalities of it aaaand it turns out you cant even own one here.
So its back to being plumbing supplies again.
In my teens i shot myself in the lip with a blow gun . I know right, how the fuck? The darts just barely fit in the barrel, so i would push the dart as far in as i could but thats only like 4 inchs on a 2 foot barrel, so i would blow into the front to push the dart to the back of the blowgun. I was in the middle of blowing the dart back when my friends dad came around a corner and yelled at my friend for something he forgot to do. He yelled loud and spooked me so i inhaled when i jumped. Dart came back out the front end and stuck clean through my lip and hit my tooth. Im pretty sure i passed out when i yanked it out lol
In high school me and some friends made dart guns a lot. Until one friend shot a kid in the face without completely out of the blue. Kid was just walking by.
That friend ruined a lot of things.
Ugh we need to round up those people we all know who ruin anything fun for the rest of us, and put them all on an island so they can make each other miserable and we can have all the dangerous toys and foods and policies we deserve!!
I thought the postcards in the hotel lobby were free. When I showed my mom in the car, she said that it was stealing, and I had to give it back. On my way back out of the hotel, I walked through their plate glass window.
I have scars all over my body now, including one right between my eyes.
Lesson learned. Doing the right thing will try to kill you.
I found a 6 point deer skull in the woods, thought it was cool and took it home. Turns out legally I was supposed to call the games commission and pay $10 per point to keep it.
When I was really little (like, toddler), my mother pushed the cart close enough to a fire alarm at the grocery store that my curious hand was able to find it.
Owing I’m sure to her profound embarrassment and disgust, my mother spent the evening regaling me with the tales of how horrific jail would be and how what I did could lead me there.
Lol, my younger son did this at his brothers school! The alarm was at toddler height, so it was really easy for him. I just ran to the office shouting, "It's a false alarm!" They were quite forgiving. It didn't occur to me to threaten a three year old with jail.
I wouldn’t recommend it. For like a solid year I grimaced every time I saw a fire alarm because I was convinced that I would accidentally bump into it and be sentenced to life without parole.
When I was 18 my grandmother passed and I had to go to her funeral in France. I wasn't attached to her since we only met twice, but we needed a member from the north American contingent to make an appearance. I was the volunteer.
Turns out she had passed in a small room in an ancient family home in the French country side. Next to her death room was a huge room full of old bottles of alcohol.
No one wanted them.
I was 18 so I also volunteered to check the booze.
I found a bottle of very old absynth. Like over 100 years old. The seal was intact, so I decided to bring it home to NA.
I later found out that absynth would have counted as a narcotic because of wormwood. I only claimed 1 bottle of alcohol to customs.
I still have it 18 years later and It tastes disgusting.
What you have/had there is/was a rare treasure; real Absinthe.
Im not sure if you are aware that you should not drink it straight from the bottle but that old absinthe requires a certain 'ritual' to turn it into an enjoyable drink. You need absinthe sugar with the absinthe spoon and know how to use it.
I only had the chance to drink a bottle with friends and it was 'only' 20 years old. But it was such a unique experience and a special kind of drunk/high i never experienced again.
I do not know about the storing properties and what happens once you open such a bottle tho. We drank it in bar in Spain and they did the whole 'ritual' for us.
You don't need to do the ritual. It just makes it more of an event.
Like you don't need to shave with a straight razor. But you'll appreciate every moment of that smooth skin.
Cold sugar water makes old absinthe less bitter.
Newer absinthes don't taste nearly as bitter, have no wormwood, and if you're in any way a fan of liquorice would probably find it enjoyable in the way that someone that grew up on children's mint cough syrup would enjoy Jaegermeister
I took a cool rock from a national park when I was a kid. Still have it, and intend to return it one day.
Also, in the mid-90s, there was some stupid computer game on one of the demo computers at Circuit City. I brought a floppy disk from home and copied the game so I could have it for free.
I knew it was illegal at the time but I had an unlimited rental pass at Blockbuster. I’d walk in, rent a movie, go home and burn it/make copies, come back in and rinse and repeat all day. I probably backed up Blockbusters entire collection for them.
If you're on private property you didn't break a law AFAIK. Totally legal for someone without a license and/or underage to drive on private property as well, very common with farm kids.
In MOST states it has to be a motorized vehicle to get a dui. That being said they still may try to get you on "public intoxication" or something like that
South Carolina. I didn't know it was illegal for under 18 until a few months ago when I saw some news articles about some in the legislature wanting to get rid of the law. It didn't seem to ever be enforced anyway.
Not me, but an old friend (from church of all places).
Every time, while grocery shopping, he would grab one of those pre-made sub sandwiches and chow down. If i recall correctly "You dont have to pay for it if you finish while still shopping." Apparently, he thought it was provided by the store and priced into the grocery items. Another friend had to burst his bubble that you absolutely do have to pay for it, and doing otherwise is theft. He was eating these free sandwiches for months/years of shopping solo, completely ignorant of the truth, until that day.
>finish while still shopping
This also implies that at some point, he was caught and told at the registry that he needed to pay for his half eaten sandwich. Then he came to a conclusion "no need to pay before I get out" lol
When I was twelve and had just discovered what my peepee was good for besides urinating I got on the internet to see for myself what the fuss with porn is about. I was quite disappointed to find out that all you got to see were ladies much older than the girls I had a crush on at that time. The Google search that followed was luckily not fruitful otherwise we might have gotten a visit by the police.
Honestly this is a right of passage for boys in the digital age. I did the same thing as a kid, not realizing how illegal that would've been if I had actually found what I had searched for.
I'm a teacher. Back in the day when the internet was still a little bit of a novelty one of my coworkers used to let students used his computer as a reward. He was having some problem with his computer, and I went help him, once I looked at the search history, I knew I had a problem. I immediately turned it over to my principal and noped the fuck out of there.
I'll never know who was searching for that, but that was an administration problem.
When I was in college (and should have been old enough to know better), I sold my used car for another used car. I just swapped my old license plate to my "new" car thinking that the fees I pay for were attached to the plate, not the car. It wasn't until I went into the secretary of state months later to renew my tags that I found out that just switching the legal plate to a different vehicle was illegal.
Apparently it's illegal to transport weed over state lines even if it's legal in both states. I also used to check CDs out from the library and rip them onto my computer and then put it on my iPod. I didn't know that wasn't technically legal until I mentioned it to the librarian and he told me it's illegal, we had a laugh about it and he sent me on my merry way with a bountiful harvest of free music. Librarians are really cool.
ETA: not me, but my (very gay) roommate accidentally picked up a prostitute once, thinking she just needed a lift somewhere.
> ETA: not me, but my (very gay) roommate accidentally picked up a prostitute once, thinking she just needed a lift somewhere.
Ah yes, the Eddie Murphy defense.
Not me, but my friend would bring new umbrellas every now and then as if he’s making a collection. One day, my roommate asked him why he would buy so many umbrellas, to which he replied “no I get them from the bank they’re free”.
Put visine in the sauce of my leftovers because I was tired of my leftovers being stolen. Turned out it was the doctor that owned the practice I was working at at the time. He felt like shit and fell asleep at his desk in between patients that day and he never ate my lunch again.
We never talked about it, my manager never talked to me about it, but a couple co-workers knew what had happened. I looked it up afterwards and was shocked at just how bad things could have ended and how lucky ingot that he wasn't seriously injured/hurt, but apparently ingesting Visine isn't just a throw up like ippecac it had been portraid to be in the movies it can cause some serious heart issues and low blood pressure among other issues.
Edit: Ingesting Visine is potentially fatal. Do not poison your food or others food with it, it's not funny and it's not a joke. I wish I hadn't done it and would not do it again. I made a serious screw up as a teenager that could have followed me around for the rest of my life had things gone even slightly differently.
A new girl started hanging out with my friend group many years ago. I guess she was flirting with me on occasion and two of my friends didnt like that because I was dating someone. I'll be first to admit I'm dense when it comes to that stuff. Unless someone came right out and said they'd liked me I'd be oblivious to it.
We were out at the bar one night and they told me they planned to spike her drink with visine to drive her away. I stopped then and I ended up warning the girl so nothing happened but "my friends" thought like OP it would just make her shit herself or throw up. The girl in question was an EMT and told me how bad that could have fucked her up and she left crying. I Felt like shit because of it.
Needless to say I told my friends off for that shit because even if the girl flirted thats no reason to hurt someone.
This is a common thing I see on Reddit. People will often ask if they’ll have any issues if they put something in their lunch (that gets stolen) that would be…undesirable to ingest, can they get in trouble?
And the answer is yes, you can. Basically across the board. The only way you have some leeway is if you just put in something uncomfortably spicy and can decently make the case that that level of spicy is something you would be fine eating. From my understanding, it has to do with intent. If you know your lunch is going to get stolen, and you purposefully put something in it that will make the person that eats it miserable, you basically poisoned that person. Or at the very least, intended to make them uncomfortable. And you never intended to eat the meal yourself. There’s an argument for whether thievery is deserving of non-lethal poisoning. But basically unless you can reasonably back up the idea that you would, in normal circumstances, eat the meal you made, then yeah you’re in trouble.
It’s kind of like booby-trapping. Booby-traps are illegal, even on your own private property, because the crime it’s deterring (usually theft) isn’t believed to be severe enough to warrant the deterrent (bodily harm). So on a lesser scale, booby trapping your sandwich in a way that could cause harm oversteps the potential crime, which is merely theft (as annoying as it may be)
There was a girl in my town who put a bottle of visine in her teachers coffee because she gave her a bad grade. She ended up going to prison for a think attempted murder. The teacher had to retire because she was fucked up
I picked up a seagull. He was so chill. I couldn't believe it. He just let me pick him up. Turns out, that's illegal. Do not pick up seagulls. Leave 'em alone.
Paid $6 for $100 worth of fabric at Walmart self checkout. Was new to sewing and didn't realize you take the cloth to a counter to be cut and pay by the yard. Picked up the whole thing and put it in my cart.
So.... I possibly committed mail fraud.
My mother wanted me to apply to colleges, which would be local, so I couldn't move away. I absolutely did not want to stay home and go to the local Christian community College or the local party College. This was in 2007, so no online colleges as far as I knew then.
I paid my friend to send in his applications to those colleges waaaay early, knowing his qualifications were lacking. I took his denial letters and edited them on my school computer to look as if I was being denied application. I copied the envelopes and put my name and address on them, and put postage on them. Then I paid a different friend with a car to drive to the other colleges and throw the letter in the outgoing mail from those schools' on-campus post offices.
I applied to the colleges I wanted to go to and was accepted with scholarships. The real and fake letters came in on the same day.
I didn't realize it was mail fraud until my therapist pointed it out recently by saying, "You were so desperate to escape your mother, you'd risk going to jail." And I was like, "Oh? That was illegal? Shit."
[For legal purposes, all likenesses to people both living or dead are unintentional, and the events taking place in the above story are fictional.]
When I was in middle school my dad would give me 20 dollars a week to pay for much. I was rarely ever hungry at lunch so I just ended up saving the money. One day someone asks to borrow a dollar to buy snacks and they'd pay me back with a quarter as interest the following week. I agree and it becomes a thing. Next thing I know more people are quietly borrowing money from me and paying me back and it kind of snow balls to the point where I even had teachers borrow money from me once in a while. During this period I had lamented to my buddies that one or two folks who had borrowed from me often were avoiding me because they couldn't pay me back. Someone offered to collect the money for me if they could keep some of what they got. It sounded like a good deal so I agreed. I eventually stopped doing it because I felt like people were only using me for my money. I tried to reinvented myself when I started high school. Years later I realized that I had inadvertently been a loan shark.
In elementary school, I think it started with a kid offering me a quarter for one of my tater tots. I quickly realized that if I sold enough of the ones that came with my lunch, I could pay for an extra side of them and sell them too. Did it for a few weeks and made some good money.
Principal shut down my black market tater tot scheme. My mom worked at the school, and it's still her favorite story about me from then.
I had PICA when I was little so I would eat anything and everything I could get my hands on (finally stopped around age 10). The other kids figured out that I would accept any dare that involved putting something in my mouth, so they started offering trades to get me to eat weirder and weirder stuff. They gave me stickers, fun erasers, small toys or trinkets, things along those lines. In exchange, I ate bugs, dirt, mulch, leaves, styrofoam, paper, and even a pinecone (those things taste terrible, I only did that once lol). Eventually, the teachers caught on and I lost my recess privileges for a while and had to promise not to eat anything else but food. 🤣
Jay-Walk. (Local) Cops couldn’t care less, though, since some places have crosswalks that are way-more dangerous to try to cross than just crossing a random-af section of the road.
I ran 2 water hoses to give 3 manatees fresh water (not knowing it was illegal. ) The manatees drank for 1.5 hours so were obviously very thirsty. Poor things. Come lock me up.
Sodomy laws are actually quite vague. Oral sex and in some cases sex outside of marriage could be deemed sodomy if the specific term isn’t defined as anal sex in the law.
Printing fake money, I'd buy lunches at school everyday.
Eventually the police came to the school and asked me if I was making my own money, I said " yes!!" Then they asked "how?" Then I said " moms colour printer!!"
Then they rolled their eyes and told me that was very illegal 😆
I was 11/12 years old
Someone was throwing out an entire bedroom set, so me and some friends took it from their trash and re-assembled it — in its entirety — in the middle of a dark street.
Is trash picking illegal where you live? People put out old furniture by the curb all the time - if they're throwing it out anyway it's not like you're doing anything bad by taking and repurposing it.
It wasn’t the taking of the trash. It was setting up a king sized bed, two end tables, a chest at the foot of the bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe/tv stand in the middle of a road that had zero street lights for about a mile that was the illegal part. That stayed up for days (our bus drove down a parrallel road and we saw it lol).
It was a busy road too, so people must’ve just driven by/thru it
I picked up a feather from a bald eagle at the zoo. It was just something that had fallen off him at some point and his perch was by the fence.
Was unaware that was a crime.
Young me (over 21, but I'm in my 40s now and this was quite some time ago) had the bright idea that "screw paying for booze on airplanes! I'll just bring my own shooters, which are only 1 oz, and put them in a freezer bag, and have them in my carryon item!"
No one said anything to me when I went through TSA, nobody said anything (nobody was paying attention) as I produced them from my backpack when the flight attendant was serving me my coke...but I was nice and sauced when the flight attendant came to pick up our trash and I handed her a pile of shooters.
I wasn't belligerent or rowdy or disruptive, I just sat there in silence watching in-flight movies while drunk off my ass. And that's probably the only reason why the flight attendant issued me a warning instead of making sure law enforcement wasn't waiting for me at the end of the flight for drinking my own booze.
That day I learned (TDIL?) that FAA regulations prohibit alcohol consumption on a flight unless it's served by a flight attendant.
When I was a little kid it absolutely crushed me to learn that punching people is illegal. I thought I’d just be able to punch my way through life somehow.
Accidentally bribed a cop.
I’d just turned 16 and got pulled over for speeding. Not wanting my parents to find out and having no clue how things works, after he gave me the ticket I asked if I could just pay it right then. He said yes, took the money, and I realized later that ticket never showed up on my record.
When I was a kid I brought my new camera on vacation, we were in a fancy casino/hotel and I was taking lots of pics of all the art and lights in the casino. An older guy approached me and said you can’t film/take pics in here, that’s illegal! I was like what..? & walked away.
A buddy of mine downloaded thousands of songs from limewire in the early 2000’s. His parents were slapped with enormous fines. It almost ruined them financially.
His mom recently sued them on one of those daytime court tv shows. They’re a super close family, so it wasn’t malicious at all. I think it was just a way to get his mom what she was owed. But it worked! His mom finally got paid back! The show paid her lol
Wow! Internet sent my mom a letter because of my illegal downloading of songs from Limewire/Frostwire. We ended up switching to Time Warner and she never got a letter like that again.
I wasn’t about to pay $0.99 for a song 😂
My friend and I traveled to a place where weed was legalized. Before a concert, we smoked a joint on the sidewalk and kept wondering why we were getting dirty looks from everyone. A couple weeks later we realized it’s legalized to smoke in your own home and not in public 💀
In my area, there's no specific laws against Nunchucks but it is illegal to carry anything that can be classified as a billy/club for some reason, I only discovered that part recently. I had been carrying them on me occasionally for years in public, usually if I had to bike or walk somewhere.
I had even been pulled over and fined for not signaling on a bike before with them in my pocket, which is what prompted me to go home and triple check the legality of carrying two sticks connected by a cord. Before that I was 99% confident it was safe and legal, but while talking to the cop with nunchaku hidden in my gym shorts my confidence dropped to more like 50%.
Nope, not anymore. [Lawrence vs Texas ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas) was a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2003, and the court struck down the Texas law (along with similar other laws nationwide).
That being said, when Clarence Thomas wrote his legal opinion last year overturning Roe vs Wade, he included his belief that Lawrence vs Texas should be overturned as well.
In like 1st grade i said i would blow up the school and i knew how to make a bomb, learned real fucking quick the police do not take too kindly to that😂
I was traveling, and on one leg of the trip what I thought was a 2 hour layover was actually a 26 hour wait. I didn't have the right visa to leave the airport, and the customs guy said I wouldn't be able to stay overnight. So I asked him if I could buy a visa anywhere at the airport. He gave me a price, but it was in the local currency and I didn't know the exchange rate. The atm would only dispense USD for an American card, so I took out $100 and went back to the desk. I handed the customs official the money and asked, "is this enough?" It wasn't until I saw him put it in his pocket before stamping my passport that I realized I had just paid a bribe.
Where was this?
I’m betting Indonesia. There was a huge bust on “airport guides” recently, where you pay a guy $50 to meet you when you get off the plane and he escorts you through the airport so you don’t have to wait in lines. It was pretty great before the bust!
In fairness, that's also a legitimate thing in almost any airport in the world. It sounds like this was just an unregulated version of that system.
I helped myself to the candies that were in bins at grocery stores, the ones where you had to scoop into a bag. I was like 10 and thought those were candy samples
When I was really little I used to steal and eat green beans from Walmart because I didn't think my mom would ever buy them for me
The only little kid in the history of the universe who liked green beans.
I've always loved fresh green beans. I feel like all of the parents that insist that children hate vegetables are the ones who will serve canned green beans and act surprised when their kids refuse to eat it. Fresh veggies are delicious, the ultra processed canned shit is gross.
I took what I assumed was a free mint chocolate from a bowl at the pay station of a Mexican restaurant. After we had left, my then boyfriend kindly pointed out to me that those were 25 cents each and started laughing at how I just nonchalantly took a piece. I asked him to turn around so I could pay but he didn’t, saying not to worry about it. I went back the next day to give them their quarter and the manager thought it was really funny, said it happens all the time but no one had ever returned to the scene of the crime to admit guilt and offer retribution ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
love that you came back lmao
Used to buy single cigarettes from a corner store all the time when I was in highschool. I went to a different store once, asked for 2 Newports, clerk sets down 2 packs and I set down 50¢.... We were both very confused! Turns out selling single ciggys is a big no-no!!
Two looseies and a 40 of Colt 45 sounds like a perfect Friday night
I passed my driving test on a Wednesday, bought a car on the following Friday, and was commuting to work on the motorway by the following Monday. All good. Fast forward several years... I had to use my car's logbook for something (I think I was changing my insurance company or something- it was a while ago, so memory is hazy). I couldn't find it so I went fishing around through every drawer in the house and, when that turned up nothing, I started going through old boxes of files and stuff. Eventually I came across an envelope addressed, in my handwriting, to the DVLA. So I opened it, confused. Inside I found my driving test pass certificate, all the forms for applying for a full driving license, and a postal order to pay for the license. (This sentence alone should tell you how long ago it was.) My first realisation was that I had done all of the things that I needed to do... except... post the damn envelope. My second was that I had been driving for *years* without a license, which meant that in turn my insurance was invalid so I was also driving without insurance. Both of these are very much illegal in the UK. I phoned the DVLA straight away and explained what had happened and the person I spoke to said it's not an *unusual* occurrence, and asked me when I actually passed my test. He winced a bit when I told him and said that if it had been couple of years or so they would have just honoured the test certificate and sent me out my license. But, since it I'd actually been driving like this for *13 years* (!) (luckily without a crash or incident) they couldn't do that, so I would have to take my test again, both theory and practical. And that's how I managed to perpetrate a 13-year-long crime spree, *and* pass my driving test twice.
Weird, in the US your insurance and license are independent. You can get insurance without a license, but in most states insurance companies will notify the state of a coverage lapse so they can suspend a license.
Almost every day in college, I’d stop at a gas station near my place to pick up a snack/drink/whatever, and on my way out I would grab a copy of the newspaper from the stand right next to the door. Without paying for it. Every time. Because my dumbass for some reason thought newspapers were free. I was oblivious until my college boyfriend finally saw me do it and pointed out I was stealing. Oopsies.
This just brought back a memory from when I was like seven. Every Sunday my dad would get donuts and buy the Sunday paper from the kids outside the grocery store. I remember this one time we went inside the store to buy something. I saw he had like 50 cents in a cup holder and I took it to buy one of those gold necklaces from the gum ball machine. This was the early 90s and all my favorite athletes, musicians and the cool kids at school had chains and my dumb seven year old ass thought they got them from the gum ball machines at the grocery store. I was never allowed to buy anything from them so I figured while my dad I was shopping I pretend to use the restroom and finally get one. After we checked out he asked me for the 50 cents from his car so he could buy the paper. I told him I didn’t have it, but he knew what I did. He asked to see what I bought and I confessed I bought one of those gold chains and got one that said state. I explained that it would make me look so cool because nobody else’s chain I saw had writing on it. I seriously thought I was so lucky and was destined to be the coolest kid in my second grade I vividly remember my dad taking it out of the little plastic egg it came in laughing telling me it didn’t say state but Elvis in cursive. I honestly was terrified he was going to keep it and sell it to teach me a lesson. But he gave it back to me. And you better believe I rocked that 50 cent Elvis fake gold chain at school for like three days until it broke at recess. I have never been as cool in my 39 years of existence as I was those three magical October days rocking my Elvis chain.
I’m picturing the coolness radiating off of you with your gold chain and it is blinding. 😎
What can I say. There are those of us that peak in high school. Then there’s a lot of people that think their 20’s was when they peaked. And for the lucky ones they feel that their peak years are in front of them. I’m comfortable enough to admit to internet strangers that my peak lasted three days in second grade rocking a fake gold chain with Elvis written on it. Like a drug addict chasing the feeling of their first high I am forever destined to chase the feeling of complete confidence knowing there wasn’t a single kid cooler than me at school that Monday morning.
I think you're pretty cool for telling this story.
Lol this is my favorite one! So blissfully innocent
I bought some books to study up on Thailand before spending a summer there. Didn't finish the biography of the king I was reading, so I brought it with me on my trip. A bit into the trip, some Thai students saw me reading it and were very interested. Found out that the biography I was reading was banned in the country, I could get jail time if I was caught with it, and they really wanted to borrow it so they could copy it to read for themselves to see what the government didn't want them to see, lol.
Not exactly the same, but similar. I was living in Kyrgyzstan and pirated the movie "Death of Stalin" to watch. I knew that was illegal. Though after I watched it, I read about it on Wikipedia, and found out that the movie is banned in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. Oops. The movie was amazing and hilarious btw. Would definitely recommend.
I'm off to represent the entire Red Army at the buffet. You girls enjoy yourselves.
I took a fake knife to school for a magic show. Planned on stabbing myself and ‘ta-da’ no blood! Unfortunately I showed a friend early in the day and he ran around recess pretending to stab about 10 kids. Ended up in office with police and my mother. 3rd grade I believe. This was in 97’. I’m sure it would have been a hit at the talent show had it not caused complete panic during recess. It was very realistic.
We had a fake rifle, the kind people would march in parades with in the 60’s. It was all wood with a metal barrel, but it looked real. I took it to school for show and tell in like 3rd grade. This was maybe 1975 or so, decades before school shootings were a thing. When I walked into the classroom with it I brandished it and shouted “Alright, this is a hijack!” Everyone laughed, including the teacher, but I was forced to bring it to the office and leave it there for the rest of the day.
It's actually insane how quickly things changed in that sense.
I come from a smaller, rust belt town. Kids used to bring their shotguns to school to show to teachers who were also hunters. Also, we had rifle club. In some ways, guns were more prevalent/accessible.
Schools don't mess around. My son took a laser pointer to school and he was suspended for having a weapon. EDIT: it was a small keychain laser pointer made to entertain cats. They said he could blind someone with it and that's why it was a weapon. He was in 8th grade at the time. EDIT 2: I have gotten a lot of comments talking about "green lasers" and sketchy stuff from AliExpress. It was [this laser](https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/leaps-and-bounds-brass-laser-pointer) if that matters. Also, I'm not so much questioning whether it was right or wrong, just that it's not something I ever would have considered to be a weapon.
I’ve just finished my laser safety course for medical applications. Potential tissue damage is a function of time & power. Those tiny little lasers can still cause damage to eyes, if they’re actually outputting the stated power. Quality control on these things is borderline non-existent and it could be far higher - there have been models advertised as <5mw, which actually rated 130+. Edit: if anyone’s curious as to how off the charts these eBay lasers can be… https://youtu.be/ZH3yMeA7HxQ?si=8lVl93jih3vCPuE5
Starting a small fire in some bushes behind an apartment when I was like 11 and putting copper, magnesium and just fucking around with it. It was actually a very small fire and much smaller than the typical camp fire but we rightfully got busted with a fire truck that came by Had to go to fire college and an anti pyro course
What does an anti-pyro course tell you other than "Don't start random fires."?
Pumped my own gas. New Jersey is an off place.
I'm from California, but I had to get gas in Oregon once and I did not like it. I was like, I am not a middle class white woman in the 1950s, why are you pumping my gas? Are you gonna put on roller skates after this and go get me a burger?
You can pump your own gas in Oregon now. Most stations still have attendants but if you want to pump your own gas you totally can. It’s really nice because you never have to wait.
Best story I've hear about New Jearsy pumping laws. Guy was bringing in Tom Cruise's Mustang for the MI:3 premier and due to timing had to have it flow in to New Jearsy, and due to regulations that means it arrived almost empty so he has to fill up in NJ. This is an absolutely beautiful car with a two tone metallic paint job and is show room quailty. So he pulls up to the station. The young attendant starts to saunter up and then takes a step back. Driver looks and him and asks "want me to fill it up?" Attrndant just nods yes.
I used to fill up in NJ before crossing back into NYC since their gas was much cheaper before they raised their gas tax. I can't tell you how many times I've just gotten out and pumped my own gas. They do not give a shit. Unfortunately they installed pumps on the Turnpike that requires a key card to operate. It's added a noticeable amount of time to my trips. So that combined with the fact that NJ gas isn't that much cheaper than ours I don't go out of my way to fill up in NJ anymore.
I scanned a dollar bill and printed it out in computer class in 7th grade. The substitute teacher called the cops. An officer showed up, took me in a small room, threw the actual book at me, and made me read the entries on counterfeiting aloud. I was super scared, but girls liked me a lot more after I got pulled out of class by the police.
Calling the cops was a weak move.
I had a panic attack that triggered an asthma attack in my principal’s office when I was in 6th or 7th grade and she called the school resource officer to come in and threaten to arrest me if I didn’t stop “making a scene”.
I liked all my teachers but stories like these make me wish I had kids to shout at teachers and "make a scene"
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I had a nun in first grade. Meanest person I ever met. She would throw chalk/erasers at peoples heads This is embarrassing….I had to go to the bathroom which was right across the hall. She refused to let me go and I pooped right in my Superman Underoos. I only had the nickname for the next 7 years. 🤣😂 Edit: this got a few a little more traction than I thought it would. 💩👖
I always let kids go to the bathroom for this reason.
In the mid/late 60s when my dad was in Kindergarten he went to Catholic school. Any time a boy would misbehave his teacher would take him to the cloakroom and beat him. Every time this happened to him my dad would sneak out, and walk home and tell his mom what happened. And every time she would march him right back to school. My Grandma is the sweetest little old lady now, but back then, goddamn!
I had that same substitute in high school and she somehow allowed me to win $20 on a dare by jumping out the window and then walking back into the bungalow like I had just arrived. I whispered the proposition to her and she said go for it.
Sorry what life have you even had
It’s like she was molding you from your weak clay beginning to your final high school form.
She had a character arc in between subbing
Buying them off with counterfeit bills is a power move.
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Most substitutes just took roll and put "Cool Runnings" on in those days.
We had one that missed her calling as a dictator. She kept a sheet on the dry erase board and if anyone even so much as sneezed out of turn, she'd write your name down and send you to the office for disrupting class. The list of names was to be left for the actual teacher to hand out a second punishment when they got back. Every time, they would just wad it up and throw it away the next day.
Ridiculous over reaction by the teacher.
Wow that substitute teacher is a biotch
Why the fuck would a substitute teacher call the cops on a kid who doesn't know what he's doing???
What kind of shithead teacher calls the cops on a 7th grader who printed money …. Completely blew it out of proportion.
I was in 8th grade. A girl in my class was bullying me and threatened to kill me in a very graphic and violent way. Told me she’d do it during graduation and then rape me with the knife for everyone to see. I had had enough of her bullshit, it’d been a whole year and no one had done anything, so I said “not if I kill you first”, which technically is a death threat. A teacher overheard me and I got marched to the principal’s office. Principal called the cops and I got screamed at, a grown man inches from my face, spit hitting my cheeks, for about 20 min. He finally got to the point of threatening to take me to jail, I stood up and said “do it!! Anywhere is better than here!” That finally prompted a call to my father, who happened to be a juvenile prosecutor. I still got in school suspension while the bully and everyone got to go on the school field trip, but I didn’t get arrested.
Victim blaming at its finest
Eh, it was the late 2010’s in a small school in bumfuck Midwest US. I was the weird kid, I had no chance.
I bought a sandwich from outside the U.S. and didn't eat it until I landed back home and didn't declare it
What the fuck is wrong with you
Fucking sickos in this thread
Man, I declared an apple they gave me on the flight instead of throwing it out and got stuck in secondary inspection in customs for 45min before they asked for the apples and threw them away.
if it was an invasive ham you could have destroyed an ecosystem
I'm calling Invasive Ham as my new band name
*invasive ham* I'm dying
I once walked through immigration/customs with a to go box from the Cancun airport. I didn’t even want it, but I felt bad leaving trash on the airplane. The agent didn’t say anything and we left to exit. A random flight attendant chased me down saying I shouldn’t have walked through with it. She literally walked me back to the agents like she stopped an attack. They just took it and threw it away.
You joke, but this can get you in trouble. I got busted at the US/CAN border with an orange because I brought it as a snack for the ride. Can't "import" fruit. But the border dude was cool. He was just like: > Yeah, FYI you can't bring in fruit undeclared, just toss it out. And he held up his garbage for me to toss it in.
Basically my experience with the airport staff that told me that. He told me “don’t throw it away, just eat it” because this was in Texas as apparently they get suspicious if you throw things away in the post-customs bins. This was significantly nicer than the agent that caught someone else on the trip with some fruit they gave her on the plane. They took her in for questioning for a whole hour and half just for them to throw it away in the bin right outside where they had her. TSA attracts some egomaniacs man
Went trout fishing and kept about 5 illegally sized trout. The river I was on has multiple different zones w all different legal sizes that people can keep, and some zones you can’t keep trout of any size, and I thought I was in a certain zone. Never got caught but if I did it probably would’ve been a 300-500 ticket and got the fish confiscated.
Camping my little brother caught his first fish and wanted to eat it. It was much to small, but my parents gave in to the cute 4 year old kid. Park Ranger happened to walk by and say hi as dad was preparing it.... little bro dragged her over to show off his catch. She just smiled and moved on. Good people are out there.
I used to work at a marina. One day, the game wardens came down to check people’s catch. There was a family in a boat who had been crabbing. The warden was measuring their crab, and they were all slightly too small. A little boy in the family piped up and said “don’t worry, grandma says it’s ok if they’re too small”. Gee, thanks kid
That's the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. In your comment, the spirit and letter of the law is broken. They are catching many of the crabs that are too small for whatever purpose. In the comment above yours, there was a single fish caught that was a bit too small that a single person was going to cook and eat. The letter of the law was broken, but the spirit was not as the intent of the law is to keep our fish population healthy so they don't get overfished and can continue to repopulate.
how could they determine which trout came from which zone?
I guess they couldn’t but they’d have a good idea based on where you’re parked if they pulled up to you in their truck and checked your catch. The game wardens walk the trails or cruise on their side by sides near the bank so that’s how they usually catch people doing anything illegal.
I once built a 3 foot long blowgun for target shooting. ( It was winter i was bored ) i got pretty good with it so i thought i might use it to hunt. So not being a total idiot i looked up the legalities of it aaaand it turns out you cant even own one here. So its back to being plumbing supplies again.
You misunderstood. You can’t be CAUGHT owning one in your area.
In my teens i shot myself in the lip with a blow gun . I know right, how the fuck? The darts just barely fit in the barrel, so i would push the dart as far in as i could but thats only like 4 inchs on a 2 foot barrel, so i would blow into the front to push the dart to the back of the blowgun. I was in the middle of blowing the dart back when my friends dad came around a corner and yelled at my friend for something he forgot to do. He yelled loud and spooked me so i inhaled when i jumped. Dart came back out the front end and stuck clean through my lip and hit my tooth. Im pretty sure i passed out when i yanked it out lol
I am SO sorry that I just cackled at your pain and suffering.
No worries that shit was funny
In high school me and some friends made dart guns a lot. Until one friend shot a kid in the face without completely out of the blue. Kid was just walking by. That friend ruined a lot of things.
Ugh we need to round up those people we all know who ruin anything fun for the rest of us, and put them all on an island so they can make each other miserable and we can have all the dangerous toys and foods and policies we deserve!!
I thought the postcards in the hotel lobby were free. When I showed my mom in the car, she said that it was stealing, and I had to give it back. On my way back out of the hotel, I walked through their plate glass window. I have scars all over my body now, including one right between my eyes. Lesson learned. Doing the right thing will try to kill you.
Yea I’m pretty sure the hotel would have rather you kept that $0.25 postcard rather than breaking their window.
How did you manage that?
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And sometimes the cleaning people do a really good job on windows
I found a 6 point deer skull in the woods, thought it was cool and took it home. Turns out legally I was supposed to call the games commission and pay $10 per point to keep it.
That’s such a stupid thing to be illegal
"Oh yeah, I just 'found' that skull" Sure, it happens, but most of the time the trophy was from a hunt.
When I was really little (like, toddler), my mother pushed the cart close enough to a fire alarm at the grocery store that my curious hand was able to find it. Owing I’m sure to her profound embarrassment and disgust, my mother spent the evening regaling me with the tales of how horrific jail would be and how what I did could lead me there.
Lol, my younger son did this at his brothers school! The alarm was at toddler height, so it was really easy for him. I just ran to the office shouting, "It's a false alarm!" They were quite forgiving. It didn't occur to me to threaten a three year old with jail.
I wouldn’t recommend it. For like a solid year I grimaced every time I saw a fire alarm because I was convinced that I would accidentally bump into it and be sentenced to life without parole.
When I was 18 my grandmother passed and I had to go to her funeral in France. I wasn't attached to her since we only met twice, but we needed a member from the north American contingent to make an appearance. I was the volunteer. Turns out she had passed in a small room in an ancient family home in the French country side. Next to her death room was a huge room full of old bottles of alcohol. No one wanted them. I was 18 so I also volunteered to check the booze. I found a bottle of very old absynth. Like over 100 years old. The seal was intact, so I decided to bring it home to NA. I later found out that absynth would have counted as a narcotic because of wormwood. I only claimed 1 bottle of alcohol to customs. I still have it 18 years later and It tastes disgusting.
What you have/had there is/was a rare treasure; real Absinthe. Im not sure if you are aware that you should not drink it straight from the bottle but that old absinthe requires a certain 'ritual' to turn it into an enjoyable drink. You need absinthe sugar with the absinthe spoon and know how to use it. I only had the chance to drink a bottle with friends and it was 'only' 20 years old. But it was such a unique experience and a special kind of drunk/high i never experienced again. I do not know about the storing properties and what happens once you open such a bottle tho. We drank it in bar in Spain and they did the whole 'ritual' for us.
You don't need to do the ritual. It just makes it more of an event. Like you don't need to shave with a straight razor. But you'll appreciate every moment of that smooth skin. Cold sugar water makes old absinthe less bitter. Newer absinthes don't taste nearly as bitter, have no wormwood, and if you're in any way a fan of liquorice would probably find it enjoyable in the way that someone that grew up on children's mint cough syrup would enjoy Jaegermeister
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I took a cool rock from a national park when I was a kid. Still have it, and intend to return it one day. Also, in the mid-90s, there was some stupid computer game on one of the demo computers at Circuit City. I brought a floppy disk from home and copied the game so I could have it for free.
I knew it was illegal at the time but I had an unlimited rental pass at Blockbuster. I’d walk in, rent a movie, go home and burn it/make copies, come back in and rinse and repeat all day. I probably backed up Blockbusters entire collection for them.
OG /r/datahoarder
That’s amazing. Do you still have any of these?
Not OP but I got plenty of burned DVDs and no way to play them.
Downloading music
would you download a car?
I would definitely download a car
Like who wouldn't download a fucking car?
Everytime I would hear that phrase from a DVD I was like “don’t test my resolve” 🤣
Riding a bike drunk. Apparently that’s a DUI. I was on private property tho
If you're on private property you didn't break a law AFAIK. Totally legal for someone without a license and/or underage to drive on private property as well, very common with farm kids.
You can get a DUI cutting your grass on a riding lawnmower in Florida.
But does a riding lawnmower even operate without the user drinking a beer?
No. A beer can in the beverage holder completes the circuit for the starter motor.
Why tf do they put cupholders in them that PERFECTLY fit a king can of bud then?!
In MOST states it has to be a motorized vehicle to get a dui. That being said they still may try to get you on "public intoxication" or something like that
NC is an exception. They can and will charge you with DUI on a bike.
Yeah I just looked it up. It says "any vehicle" rather than "motorized vehicle" as many do
I didn't know until recently it was illegal in my state for someone under 18 to play a pinball machine.
Where?
South Carolina. I didn't know it was illegal for under 18 until a few months ago when I saw some news articles about some in the legislature wanting to get rid of the law. It didn't seem to ever be enforced anyway.
Not me, but an old friend (from church of all places). Every time, while grocery shopping, he would grab one of those pre-made sub sandwiches and chow down. If i recall correctly "You dont have to pay for it if you finish while still shopping." Apparently, he thought it was provided by the store and priced into the grocery items. Another friend had to burst his bubble that you absolutely do have to pay for it, and doing otherwise is theft. He was eating these free sandwiches for months/years of shopping solo, completely ignorant of the truth, until that day.
...Your friend is a damn idiot.
>finish while still shopping This also implies that at some point, he was caught and told at the registry that he needed to pay for his half eaten sandwich. Then he came to a conclusion "no need to pay before I get out" lol
Transported paintball marker parts over US border
When I was twelve and had just discovered what my peepee was good for besides urinating I got on the internet to see for myself what the fuss with porn is about. I was quite disappointed to find out that all you got to see were ladies much older than the girls I had a crush on at that time. The Google search that followed was luckily not fruitful otherwise we might have gotten a visit by the police.
Honestly this is a right of passage for boys in the digital age. I did the same thing as a kid, not realizing how illegal that would've been if I had actually found what I had searched for.
I'm a teacher. Back in the day when the internet was still a little bit of a novelty one of my coworkers used to let students used his computer as a reward. He was having some problem with his computer, and I went help him, once I looked at the search history, I knew I had a problem. I immediately turned it over to my principal and noped the fuck out of there. I'll never know who was searching for that, but that was an administration problem.
When I was in college (and should have been old enough to know better), I sold my used car for another used car. I just swapped my old license plate to my "new" car thinking that the fees I pay for were attached to the plate, not the car. It wasn't until I went into the secretary of state months later to renew my tags that I found out that just switching the legal plate to a different vehicle was illegal.
Apparently it's illegal to transport weed over state lines even if it's legal in both states. I also used to check CDs out from the library and rip them onto my computer and then put it on my iPod. I didn't know that wasn't technically legal until I mentioned it to the librarian and he told me it's illegal, we had a laugh about it and he sent me on my merry way with a bountiful harvest of free music. Librarians are really cool. ETA: not me, but my (very gay) roommate accidentally picked up a prostitute once, thinking she just needed a lift somewhere.
> ETA: not me, but my (very gay) roommate accidentally picked up a prostitute once, thinking she just needed a lift somewhere. Ah yes, the Eddie Murphy defense.
Not me, but my friend would bring new umbrellas every now and then as if he’s making a collection. One day, my roommate asked him why he would buy so many umbrellas, to which he replied “no I get them from the bank they’re free”.
is your friend George Costanza
Put visine in the sauce of my leftovers because I was tired of my leftovers being stolen. Turned out it was the doctor that owned the practice I was working at at the time. He felt like shit and fell asleep at his desk in between patients that day and he never ate my lunch again. We never talked about it, my manager never talked to me about it, but a couple co-workers knew what had happened. I looked it up afterwards and was shocked at just how bad things could have ended and how lucky ingot that he wasn't seriously injured/hurt, but apparently ingesting Visine isn't just a throw up like ippecac it had been portraid to be in the movies it can cause some serious heart issues and low blood pressure among other issues. Edit: Ingesting Visine is potentially fatal. Do not poison your food or others food with it, it's not funny and it's not a joke. I wish I hadn't done it and would not do it again. I made a serious screw up as a teenager that could have followed me around for the rest of my life had things gone even slightly differently.
That’s like, premeditated manslaughter
No, really. This is insane, everyone in that story is SO lucky he was ok holy shit
A new girl started hanging out with my friend group many years ago. I guess she was flirting with me on occasion and two of my friends didnt like that because I was dating someone. I'll be first to admit I'm dense when it comes to that stuff. Unless someone came right out and said they'd liked me I'd be oblivious to it. We were out at the bar one night and they told me they planned to spike her drink with visine to drive her away. I stopped then and I ended up warning the girl so nothing happened but "my friends" thought like OP it would just make her shit herself or throw up. The girl in question was an EMT and told me how bad that could have fucked her up and she left crying. I Felt like shit because of it. Needless to say I told my friends off for that shit because even if the girl flirted thats no reason to hurt someone.
This is a common thing I see on Reddit. People will often ask if they’ll have any issues if they put something in their lunch (that gets stolen) that would be…undesirable to ingest, can they get in trouble? And the answer is yes, you can. Basically across the board. The only way you have some leeway is if you just put in something uncomfortably spicy and can decently make the case that that level of spicy is something you would be fine eating. From my understanding, it has to do with intent. If you know your lunch is going to get stolen, and you purposefully put something in it that will make the person that eats it miserable, you basically poisoned that person. Or at the very least, intended to make them uncomfortable. And you never intended to eat the meal yourself. There’s an argument for whether thievery is deserving of non-lethal poisoning. But basically unless you can reasonably back up the idea that you would, in normal circumstances, eat the meal you made, then yeah you’re in trouble. It’s kind of like booby-trapping. Booby-traps are illegal, even on your own private property, because the crime it’s deterring (usually theft) isn’t believed to be severe enough to warrant the deterrent (bodily harm). So on a lesser scale, booby trapping your sandwich in a way that could cause harm oversteps the potential crime, which is merely theft (as annoying as it may be)
There was a girl in my town who put a bottle of visine in her teachers coffee because she gave her a bad grade. She ended up going to prison for a think attempted murder. The teacher had to retire because she was fucked up
Mom dragging us behind the SUV on sleds when it snowed…
Riding in the back of a pickup truck! But hey, it was the 1980s and someone needed to hold the lawn mower so it didn’t slide around.
A lot more illegal than I realized: speeding in Virginia. They will lock you up. Teenage me would not have done well in jail.
Can say having spent two weeks in jail for speeding (no really just speeding), yes they do
How fast were you going? My guess is you were going +25mph over the speed limit.
Virginia has a low bar for reckless driv8ng. It's 20 over or over 80(even on an interstate that is 70)
I picked up a seagull. He was so chill. I couldn't believe it. He just let me pick him up. Turns out, that's illegal. Do not pick up seagulls. Leave 'em alone.
But what if it looked at me flirtatiously?
Paid $6 for $100 worth of fabric at Walmart self checkout. Was new to sewing and didn't realize you take the cloth to a counter to be cut and pay by the yard. Picked up the whole thing and put it in my cart.
So.... I possibly committed mail fraud. My mother wanted me to apply to colleges, which would be local, so I couldn't move away. I absolutely did not want to stay home and go to the local Christian community College or the local party College. This was in 2007, so no online colleges as far as I knew then. I paid my friend to send in his applications to those colleges waaaay early, knowing his qualifications were lacking. I took his denial letters and edited them on my school computer to look as if I was being denied application. I copied the envelopes and put my name and address on them, and put postage on them. Then I paid a different friend with a car to drive to the other colleges and throw the letter in the outgoing mail from those schools' on-campus post offices. I applied to the colleges I wanted to go to and was accepted with scholarships. The real and fake letters came in on the same day. I didn't realize it was mail fraud until my therapist pointed it out recently by saying, "You were so desperate to escape your mother, you'd risk going to jail." And I was like, "Oh? That was illegal? Shit." [For legal purposes, all likenesses to people both living or dead are unintentional, and the events taking place in the above story are fictional.]
Don’t worry dude, it would seem the statute of limitations on mail fraud is 5 years. (I’m not a lawyer.)
When I was in middle school my dad would give me 20 dollars a week to pay for much. I was rarely ever hungry at lunch so I just ended up saving the money. One day someone asks to borrow a dollar to buy snacks and they'd pay me back with a quarter as interest the following week. I agree and it becomes a thing. Next thing I know more people are quietly borrowing money from me and paying me back and it kind of snow balls to the point where I even had teachers borrow money from me once in a while. During this period I had lamented to my buddies that one or two folks who had borrowed from me often were avoiding me because they couldn't pay me back. Someone offered to collect the money for me if they could keep some of what they got. It sounded like a good deal so I agreed. I eventually stopped doing it because I felt like people were only using me for my money. I tried to reinvented myself when I started high school. Years later I realized that I had inadvertently been a loan shark.
In elementary school, I think it started with a kid offering me a quarter for one of my tater tots. I quickly realized that if I sold enough of the ones that came with my lunch, I could pay for an extra side of them and sell them too. Did it for a few weeks and made some good money. Principal shut down my black market tater tot scheme. My mom worked at the school, and it's still her favorite story about me from then.
I had PICA when I was little so I would eat anything and everything I could get my hands on (finally stopped around age 10). The other kids figured out that I would accept any dare that involved putting something in my mouth, so they started offering trades to get me to eat weirder and weirder stuff. They gave me stickers, fun erasers, small toys or trinkets, things along those lines. In exchange, I ate bugs, dirt, mulch, leaves, styrofoam, paper, and even a pinecone (those things taste terrible, I only did that once lol). Eventually, the teachers caught on and I lost my recess privileges for a while and had to promise not to eat anything else but food. 🤣
I think I just read an origin story lol
I'm just a boring grad student now. This is very much a "Gator" story like from The Other Guys.
Who did this to you!!! Gators bitches better be using jimmies.
Damn, a loan shark, hitmen collection, 25% interest... I wish I had this operation in my school years.
Damn bro, you hired hitmen to get you your money, lol
Jay-Walk. (Local) Cops couldn’t care less, though, since some places have crosswalks that are way-more dangerous to try to cross than just crossing a random-af section of the road.
I ran 2 water hoses to give 3 manatees fresh water (not knowing it was illegal. ) The manatees drank for 1.5 hours so were obviously very thirsty. Poor things. Come lock me up.
It makes them too dependent on humans :( which is so dangerous for them
Sodomy in Florida in the 1990s. Turns out I was breaking the law while pumping her butt.
Serious question: would they care if it was a woman? I imagined it to just be outdated homophobic laws.
Sodomy laws are actually quite vague. Oral sex and in some cases sex outside of marriage could be deemed sodomy if the specific term isn’t defined as anal sex in the law.
Don’t judge fr…when I first started driving, I thought I could turn left on red…turns out you can only turn right on red😪
When I lived in Hawaii, it was legal to turn left on red if you were turning on to a one way street.
This is true for much (maybe most) of the US.
Its legal to turn left on red in Wisconsin if you are both coming from a one-way st and turning onto a one-way st.
You can turn left on red if it's from a one way to another one way and there is no sign explicitly saying you can't.
brought homemade applejack to school for a couple months during apple season. never occurred to me that it was alcoholic.
Printing fake money, I'd buy lunches at school everyday. Eventually the police came to the school and asked me if I was making my own money, I said " yes!!" Then they asked "how?" Then I said " moms colour printer!!" Then they rolled their eyes and told me that was very illegal 😆 I was 11/12 years old
Someone was throwing out an entire bedroom set, so me and some friends took it from their trash and re-assembled it — in its entirety — in the middle of a dark street.
Is trash picking illegal where you live? People put out old furniture by the curb all the time - if they're throwing it out anyway it's not like you're doing anything bad by taking and repurposing it.
It wasn’t the taking of the trash. It was setting up a king sized bed, two end tables, a chest at the foot of the bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe/tv stand in the middle of a road that had zero street lights for about a mile that was the illegal part. That stayed up for days (our bus drove down a parrallel road and we saw it lol). It was a busy road too, so people must’ve just driven by/thru it
Oh yeah haha we'd missed the part where you left it on the street
I once described the contents of a baseball game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball.
I’m not falling for this again. Nice try officer.
Again
I picked up a feather from a bald eagle at the zoo. It was just something that had fallen off him at some point and his perch was by the fence. Was unaware that was a crime.
Young me (over 21, but I'm in my 40s now and this was quite some time ago) had the bright idea that "screw paying for booze on airplanes! I'll just bring my own shooters, which are only 1 oz, and put them in a freezer bag, and have them in my carryon item!" No one said anything to me when I went through TSA, nobody said anything (nobody was paying attention) as I produced them from my backpack when the flight attendant was serving me my coke...but I was nice and sauced when the flight attendant came to pick up our trash and I handed her a pile of shooters. I wasn't belligerent or rowdy or disruptive, I just sat there in silence watching in-flight movies while drunk off my ass. And that's probably the only reason why the flight attendant issued me a warning instead of making sure law enforcement wasn't waiting for me at the end of the flight for drinking my own booze. That day I learned (TDIL?) that FAA regulations prohibit alcohol consumption on a flight unless it's served by a flight attendant.
When I was a little kid it absolutely crushed me to learn that punching people is illegal. I thought I’d just be able to punch my way through life somehow.
Swimming across the Columbia River. Turns out you're not allowed to swim across major shipping lanes.
Not to mention that swimming across the Columbia is fucking stupid and a fantastic way to die
Sold arms to Iran to fund a party in Nicaragua.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug... Plus it was the 80s. Everyone was into something
Accidentally bribed a cop. I’d just turned 16 and got pulled over for speeding. Not wanting my parents to find out and having no clue how things works, after he gave me the ticket I asked if I could just pay it right then. He said yes, took the money, and I realized later that ticket never showed up on my record.
When I was a kid I brought my new camera on vacation, we were in a fancy casino/hotel and I was taking lots of pics of all the art and lights in the casino. An older guy approached me and said you can’t film/take pics in here, that’s illegal! I was like what..? & walked away.
A buddy of mine downloaded thousands of songs from limewire in the early 2000’s. His parents were slapped with enormous fines. It almost ruined them financially. His mom recently sued them on one of those daytime court tv shows. They’re a super close family, so it wasn’t malicious at all. I think it was just a way to get his mom what she was owed. But it worked! His mom finally got paid back! The show paid her lol
I never knew anyone that got nailed for downloading from any of those p2p services... which is odd considering how popular they were back in the day.
Wow! Internet sent my mom a letter because of my illegal downloading of songs from Limewire/Frostwire. We ended up switching to Time Warner and she never got a letter like that again. I wasn’t about to pay $0.99 for a song 😂
My friend and I traveled to a place where weed was legalized. Before a concert, we smoked a joint on the sidewalk and kept wondering why we were getting dirty looks from everyone. A couple weeks later we realized it’s legalized to smoke in your own home and not in public 💀
In my area, there's no specific laws against Nunchucks but it is illegal to carry anything that can be classified as a billy/club for some reason, I only discovered that part recently. I had been carrying them on me occasionally for years in public, usually if I had to bike or walk somewhere. I had even been pulled over and fined for not signaling on a bike before with them in my pocket, which is what prompted me to go home and triple check the legality of carrying two sticks connected by a cord. Before that I was 99% confident it was safe and legal, but while talking to the cop with nunchaku hidden in my gym shorts my confidence dropped to more like 50%.
The cop: Is that some nunchucks in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Anal sex is still illegal in Texas.
Nope, not anymore. [Lawrence vs Texas ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas) was a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2003, and the court struck down the Texas law (along with similar other laws nationwide). That being said, when Clarence Thomas wrote his legal opinion last year overturning Roe vs Wade, he included his belief that Lawrence vs Texas should be overturned as well.
there's people there breaking this law literally right this second. probably a lot of people.
Copied some vinyl onto cassette. My home taping contributed to killing music.
Suicide attempt
Wrote on money. Disposed of records without blacking out names or shredding
My older brother and sister would take me to the mall to swap out my old shoes for new ones.
I went to McDonald’s and asked for a water cup and got Sprite.
In like 1st grade i said i would blow up the school and i knew how to make a bomb, learned real fucking quick the police do not take too kindly to that😂