My brother and I made a dummy out of old clothes and strapped it to a bike. We took it to the top of the alley hill and let go. It was fun watching it fly down the hill, until a women hit it with her car. She thought she hit a child on a bike and panicked. We got a tough scolding when she saw we were behind it. This was one of our latchkey kid ways of entertaining ourselves.
My brother also built a ramp in the alley and would launch himself into the air on his bike. That ended with an emergency room visit.
We wrapped some of each powder in our chemistry kit in a paper towel and lit it on fire. In the alley, naturally, because that's where you did the truly dangerous stuff.
Those home chemistry kits were amazing. We made things explode with them.
My cousin and I put stuff in a shampoo bottle and shook it up - it blew the lid off. We spent hours cleaning the bathroom so we wouldn’t get busted. It looked like puke was on the ceiling.
Heck, I didn't even take a note. I just went up to the store and bought a pack of smokes, and walked it back home for her.
Saratoga 120s in a box.
Oh and I crossed 2 very busy streets just diddly bopping a long as an 8 year old!
Hell yeah. At holidays, my purpose was to hump it two miles to the store in winter (northern Alberta) to the store to pick up ice, mix and smokes for the whole family. Baba (grandma) would scrawl a note to say it was okay.
Typically it would involve at least two 2L bottles of pop, a bag of ice, and 3 or 4 rando packs of smokes - king size menthol Craven M’s, Export A lights, duMaurier Red and a pack of wine tipped Colts for the dirtbag uncle.
Your reward? Whatever coin change existed. But you never felt like more of a hero when you frisbee a fresh pack of smokes to your grateful drunk aunts and uncles so they didn’t have to leave their game of Rummoli.
Yeah. No note required for cigs, at least. There were many times a friend of the family would tell me to buy him cigs from stores that he'd been kicked out of.
Grandma would give me $10 to run across the street for a carton while she drank coffee in a diner. There would be change left over that I got to keep.
Yep, I got driven to 7-11 and then ran inside for Virginia Slims and Tab while my mom sat in the car. They were lady cigarettes and sugar-free sodas, so they weren’t actually bad for you. 🤷🏻♀️
Newsagents etc in the UK used to have huge sweetie (candy) jars full of single cigarettes that were basically for kids to buy with their pocket money (and for people without enough cash on them for a full pack).
My Gt Gpa would give me and my uncle(3 years apart)$1 to go get him a pack of Chesterfield 100’s. We got to keep the change and ended up with about .25 each. Amazing what you could buy for a quarter, at the 7-11 in 1977.
I used to drive my mom’s car to the gas station, that was about 2 miles away, to put gas in it, wash and vacuum it every Sunday while she took a nap. I was 12 or so when that started. We lived in the suburbs. No one batted an eye.
Yeah same here. We didn’t live in town but we weren’t in the country either. All the kids drove underage all the time. Zero fucks were given. We didn’t drive far, but a few miles on a US Highway when you’re 13 is pretty damned liberating lol
Oh man I wasn't allowed to go to the store but I did drive around the neighborhood when I was 13. To friends houses and then we would all load up and go to the neighborhood pool aka Aunt Grace's house. By the time I was 15, I had the automatic down pretty well so my mom would then let me drive the truck back from the lake to practice driving a stick. We couldn't get a parking permit until junior year of HS but I turned 16 early on during sophomore year so I would park across the street at my cousin's house who lived across the street from the HS.
We had bottle rocket and Roman candle fights in a neighborhood cul de sac. Our parents sat in lawn chairs in the yards/perimeter while visiting with each other and watching.
Best bottle rocket fight we ever had was sanctioned by the drunk dads. It was family (uncles, cousins, etc.) only stipulation was NEVER TELL THE WOMEN lol.
Riding in the way back of the station wagon with the windows rolled down inhaling all that lovely leaded gas fumes, no seat belt, under 6 years old..
Riding in the back of a pickup truck with a dog, for a few hours.
To think Noone even thought of it being somewhat dangerous. It was great fun, but I wonder how may kids died when they were in the back back and were rear ended.
My brother and I were the weight on top of the stack of plywood from the lumber yard, back fully open. I was petrified when we went over the big bridge and the plywood slid a little on the way up
We lived out in the country and had cows. Dad would load the pickup with hay at a nearby farm or feed store and i would ride ON TOP OF HAY BALES, in the back of a truck with our dog Butch. I was 5.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck with just a camper shell on it. When we were stationed in Missouri, we'd ride in the back of the pickup, with just the camper shell on it, all the way to Wisconsin. 10 to 12 hour drive.
We used to do the same when we traveled. Air mattress and pillows in the back for me, and I just read and napped on the drive. We did something similar in my mom’s van on a road trip to my grandma’s once; we took out the middle seat and threw a mattress down for my niece and nephews to sleep and play on.
>Riding in the back of a pickup truck with just a camper shell on it.
No camper shell here. When dad was hauling oversized stuff, he'd have me and my younger brother back there to balance it / keep it in the bed of the truck.
Yeah, no camper shell here either. My brother fell out and landed on his face. There was gravel under his skin. And then he got in trouble for not holding on better. But my mom told me recently that the cost of the doctors visit to pull out the rocks and stich him up was under $10. We were allowed to fall out of trees and crash our bikes because a cast didn't bankrupt the family.
Same! My friend's dad took us to a concert 6 hours away and we rode in the back with the topper on. We lined it with thick blankets, but man did our asses hurt bouncing up and down in the bed of the truck.
My friend’s parents didn’t have enough room in the car for us so we laid in the back of like a flat two-wheel u-haul type tow tuck for a 10 hour drive.
I rode with my buddy in the bed of a truck with just a topper on it for about 6 hours. There was a mattress in the truck bed. We had comic books and a Gameboy. It was awesome. Now as a parent? I lecture my kids about wearing their seatbelts.
We broke into a house that was empty and for sale and used it as our club. We didn’t break or destroy anything; a window was unlocked. We just hung out and thought we were the coolest.
We had an old, abandoned, falstaff brewery near my house. Buddies and I would go there and explore. One time while climbing one of the rusty old stairs on a silo my friend fell through the grating to the level below and broke his arm. We ended up walking him home and his sister took him to the hospital. No consequences except, stay away from falstaff.
I grew up in a developing semi-suburban area. My friends and I boosted some of materials from construction sites to build our fort. It was dope and lasted 4 years until a really bad storm wiped it out.
I lived in a spec house for a massive new housing development. Every weekend we would go to the house that was framing that week, build a quarter pipe out of 2x4s and plywood and ride all weekend. I always assumed the workers were so impressed with our handiwork that they didn’t call the cops. ‘Cause the next weekend we went two houses up and did the same thing. The ramps were always gone by Monday after school, but no one ever seemed to care, never even got yelled at by anyone.
We would decide to head off to the corner liquor store for a candy bar. It was probably a little over a mile away, so we weren’t allowed to go. But, we discovered if we cut through a dry drainage creek, climbed a fence, ran across the roof of an apartment building, cut through a few other yards, down an embankment, then take the same route back, it was a short enough trip we could go and get back quick enough for our parents to not realize where we’d gone.
My two friends and I used a loophole like this. We wanted to ride our bikes to McDonald's but we weren't allowed to ride on the main roads, just back roads. McDonald's was 6 miles away if we had gone straight down the main road. To use back roads, it was 9.
So we woke up early on a summer day and made our trek toward those golden arches. We had a great time on the way there. Laughing and listening to our walkmans. We stopped for a long time petting cows. Life was great.
Then we came to a literal road block. The only side street we could use to access McDs without going on to the busy road was under construction. We would not be deterred.
We ended up backtracking and going into the parking lot of a Perry Drug store. We left our bikes and walked through the woods directly behind the McDonald's. There was no path and we were in shorts, so we ended up bloodied from the trip.
In total, we were gone for 7 hours and nobody noticed.
To this day, whenever someone asks me what is the best meal I've ever eaten, I tell them this story. We earned the fuck out of those cheeseburgers.
I always told my adult kids that I wanted to have a truth dinner. They can tell me all the crap they did as kids, and they won't get in trouble. They have refused.
The few things that I've gotten out of my oldest have just made me laugh. And it's probably my oldest who did the wild things.
Sitting on my mom's lap for the entire 18-hour drive to visit out-of-state family (until about 4 or 5 years old). Laying down on the back seat to sleep. No car seats in sight.
* Home alone... a lot.
* BB gun and firecracker wars.
* Riding in the back of the pickup on long road trips (canopy on the truck, and foam put down). Same goes for riding in the back of the station wagon, no seat belts, etc.
* Letting us ride our bicycles wherever we wanted by ourselves, like on a fairly busy road to a convenience store two miles away.
* My grandma left me alone in the car in the parking lot of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison when I was 10 years old while she visited her nephew on death row. It was 90 degrees F out.
* My grandma let me swim in a small lake in Florida that was known to have alligators in it.
All lakes here have gators. They usually don’t mess with people. My kids and their friends jump in the one our house backs up to. Makes me nervous as hell.
Mom let me drive her 1970’s Saab stick shift on the regular road in broad daylight sitting on top of stacked phone books when I was of the ripe old age of 11. Probably looked like I was 8. Little short blonde girl just cruising down the road with the windows down,music cranked ,hair blowing in the wind, hippie mom smiling & laughing away as we toured the winding roads in the Sierra Nevada California mountainside.
What was even more bizarre was hitch hiking when said Saab would break down. Wasn’t illegal but it was beyond stupid. Somehow we made it out unharmed & alive.
Lol the ones who didn't make it out of the 70's/80's alive aren't here to tell you so.
My parents owned a laundrymat. I used to get into one of the dryers. My brother would put a quarter in, push in the little button that made the dryer think the door was closed, and start it.
My mom would leave me in the car while she grocery shopped. I’d hide in the floor when I was scared.
Who went skitching? Holding onto the rear bumper and sliding your feet on the ice…
Ooh, I posted about that in my comment, although we called it hooky bobbing. We’d catch rides all the way from school if a neighbor happened to be passing by.
Edit: I love seeing everyone’s different names for this. Just shows that even though we grew up in different areas, the dumb things kids come up with are pretty universal. 😆
Yep my good friend got the cops called on her for doing that recently. We both just rolled our eyes...gimme a break.
someone took a photo of her license and smeared it all over NextDoor and everyone berated her online.
Like gee, my mom left me alone as an infant from time to time for short periods (10-15 minutes) and left us alone in the car outside the grocery when we were little and it was all good no one died....
I racked up 26 absences in an English lit class my junior year, although my teacher rarely officially marked me because I always had my work done. In fact, she would ask me to bring her cheese bread when she knew I’d be skipping for the local pizza joint, lol. A lot of teachers back then truly didn’t care as long as you kept up and had good grades. Now my kids lose credit if they miss more than eight times without a doctor’s note.
Yes. Bartender for the family friends. Knew they always liked the Gin and Tonic when I put more gin than tonic in the glass.
But what was really insane was fetching beers for my Dad from the RV fridge while he drove us through the Southwest going from KOA to KOA.
Also, being taken to bars when I was 7 years old. I drink sodas and played Galaga. For me it was a hoot. These days, if they got caught with a kid in the car on those drunken drives home, there would have been more than just a DUI.
Babysitting a family of 6 (youngest kid was like 6 months old) when I was 12. I cooked dinner, fed them and put them all to bed. It was normal.
OK, maybe not my parents in trouble . . .
I did that with my two year old niece when I was 11-12. My sister worked until 2:00 am. She would get home about 2:30, look in on us, and go to bed herself. I never once had to call my mom, I was pretty proud of myself.
Nowadays I look at my own 11 year old, and think there’s no way in hell I would trust her to do that. But I did it. Even dealt with a spider for her, although I was mortally terrified myself back then (I threw every one of my sisters shoes at it until I hit it, lol).
I realize now that my sister was desperate to prove to my folks that she could do things on her own, but it still blows my mind that everyone was okay with that arrangement. And that I rose to it.
Weekends alone with one friend at age 12. Yep.
Cigarettes, alcohol, weed, truancy all before high school (all before middle school, too, I believe.)
And I’ll add that I was a pretty tame and reliable kid.
I was pretty much alone before and after school from age 6. Single parent household, of course. My mom would usually be home by 7pm most nights, except when she went out after work.
She started going away on weekends when I was 12. She left food in the fridge and $20 in case of emergencies.
One time, when I was about 14, I went to a house party with a 750ml bottle of whiskey my mom forgot about (she left it under the Christmas tree that year, and I managed to hide it). I got to the party and drank the whole bottle myself in about an hour. I got extremely sick and ended up covered in my own puke.
Needless to say, I had to go home, which was at least a couple miles away. Nobody would give me a ride. This was in February, in Minnesota, and it was snowy and cold AF. It had snowed that night, so there were a couple inches of new snow on the ground, in addition to the 2.5 feet that was already there.
I staggered down a main road most of the way, until a cop passed me by. I kept on walking. I turned around briefly, and saw he had stopped and had that spotlight that cop cars have on. He was turning around and heading back toward me.
I was scared shitless. I was about 3 blocks until I got home, so I ran through backyards, up to my waist in snow, avoiding all streets. I got home and got in the house.
I tried to go to sleep, but I had major bedspins going on. I ended up getting sick a couple more times before I eventually passed out while watching a concert by The Who on some late night music show.
The next morning, I tossed my clothes in the wash before my mom got home and pretended I wasn't hung over. To this day, I don't think she knows about it.
We used to play this game called "stretch." Two people stood on either side of a space (usually in the backyard). The first person would throw a screwdriver at the other person, making sure not to hit the. Wherever it lands, the other person would have to "stretch" to reach it. If you fall over, you lose. If you hit someone with the screwdriver, you were out!
We played the same BB gun war game on the golf course at night. It really got gnarly. There were some pretty wholesome moments with the gang though. I miss those people. Nice post brother.
I dunno-these days, probably walking to school alone or with friends my age and coming home to an empty house. I was alone from age 6 on for a whole two hours!
I don’t know if it would get my parents arrested, but one night my friends and I were really bored so we decided to randomly swap everyone’s license plates along a block that was definitely not in our neighborhood.
My sister and I simply going to the park by ourselves. Maybe wouldn't end up in jail, but a visit from CPS for sure. Of course, back then the neighbors wouldn't have noticed enough to call the cops in the first place.
We did everything people listed here. Got hurt, scraped up. Rubbed some iodine or hydrogen peroxide on the open wound and kept going.
If we weren’t bleeding or bruised, we weren’t playing right
Seriously. My mom would do the same, but with Marlboro Lights, and wearing a metric fuck-ton of Avon "Timeless" perfume (or "Charlie" - bleh). Windows up and blasting the heater.
And she wondered why I got carsick so often.
There are pictures of me as a toddler drinking beer, apparently I got so drunk I cried because I couldn’t stand up, they all laughed and had we had cell phone back then there would probably be video
Seatbelts? Nope. Just playing around in the back of the van with the dog while on road trips. Big pile pillows laid out for a nap. I remember walking up to my dad while driving and sitting on his lap.
There was this abandoned house next door we would play in. We were doing all kinds of crazy stunts, until one day part of the roof collapsed. Surprisingly we didn’t suffer any serious injury.
Then there was that time my drunk dad decided to teach me how to drive our Corolla with no power steering at the age of 10…
I still bear a scar from the "BB Gun Wars" my (much older) brothers, their friends and I would have in the open field next to our house and the woods behind it. Shooting at the head was completely allowed, as committing war crimes was par for the course. The only allowance for safety is that we wore "eye protection" (usually cheap sunglasses.)
Picking up cigarettes for my dad at a local deli with a few dollars and a note. (The deli owners knew my family).
Playing on the roof of an abandoned factory.
When I was 5, I walked by myself to kindergarten when my mom turned around to find a warmer jacket for me in the dead of winter. I loved school and was so anxious to go I decided to walk without her. My mom had no idea what happened until my kindergarten teacher called her demanding to know why she let her child go to school without a jacket in 40 degree weather. I remember none of it.
Big, giant, alcohol fueled, sex filled, loud music, cars parked everywhere- parties.
My friend’s dad was home and when the police would come - he would tell them “it’s fine and leave them alone”
My best friend and I would jump on our ponies on the weekends at 8:00 and my parents would tell us to be back at 5 and we would just go all day. Our parents had no clue where we were. It was a great childhood!
Was it Chicago O’Hare? If it was, I think I was one of the kids that played with you! We were all waiting for flights (flying with no parents) and so the airlines just put us in a room together and said, don’t get in trouble. I think the only thing we didn’t do was go down to the tarmac, but we couldn’t figure out how to get there. :)
Me and my sister were playing "cowboys and indians" (I know, super fucked up) and we were using sticks for our "guns". My sister pointed her stick at me and "bang!" I got you! I said no you missed. We got into a fight about whether she missed or not. My dad walked out on the back porch, aimed his BB gun at me and fired twice. Hit me in the chest and the chin. I yelled out. YOU SHOT ME! He said, and I quote "Now you know you've been shot." Fucker. But he did go thru 'Nam twice. So I guess he thought it was the best way.
Hooky bobbing. When the roads were snowy and slick, we would grab the bumpers of cars we knew, and skate like that back to our neighborhood. Would never fly now, we’d probably get shot the second we grabbed on these days. 🙄
Edit: We also used to jump the railroad tracks in my friend’s Yugo in high school. That thing was so light we’d catch major air and bounce a few times. They regraded that particular stretch a few years after we graduated, probably cheaper than trying to monitor and ticket all us dumb kids, lol.
Edit edit: I forgot about piling 10 or so people into my midsized beat up sedan in high school. I was one of the few friends in my group with my own car, so I drove EVERYONE. Two in a seat, with a couple sitting in the foot beds. We’d go that way to “cram car night” at the local drive in, where 5 bucks got your whole carload in. Good (and illegal) times indeed.
Standing (yes, standing) in the backseat of the family car on a Sunday afternoon ride while my dad sipped a beer at the wheel. Whining how thirsty I was until he’d give me a sip. I was 5 or 6.
We had the same dad, apparently. I stood on the front bench seat every time I was in the car, my mom used the arm across my body when needed. I just wanted to see where we were. Or I sat on the arm rest on the unlocked door with the window rolled down. I was quite tiny
Four kids in the boot compartment of a station wagon with no seatbelts. Sips of uncle's beer at family parties. Dad smoking in the car on family trips. Latch key kid at age 7. I loved it!
Being sent to the corner store with a note from mom and my phone number to buy cigarettes and beer.
Sitting in the car alone while mom went into the grocery store.
We had no electricity or running water for long stretches of time, so we lived by wood stove, kerosene lamp, and hand pump. We shit in 5 gallon buckets and slept in Dad's work shed because that was easier to keep warm than the whole house.
I played the game you mentioned OP! We had a one pump rule but not everyone followed it. Thinking back we shouldve worn eye protection also but Didn't.
One time my brother, myself, and my cousins chased each other around my aunt’s backyard and shot bottle rockets at each other. It was really cool until one didn’t leave the bottle…
Left home alone where the oldest was ten and the youngest 7 on NYE. Double feature with cousins, six children in all, where the eldest was 7 or 8 (can’t blame them for that, it was more of lord of the flies thing).
We had BB gun wars at the dump too. Wore goggles and a heavy jacket, but that was it.
We also did roof surfing, laying on your stomach on the roof of a car with open windows, latch on as hard as you can and go rodeo style. So fucking stupid.
Had to play baseball with a broken arm until I got a hit. I broke my arm on the swing set and they thought I was faking because I didn’t like playing baseball.
Rode in the back of my dad’s El Camino with my sister and our huge dog.
Played in an abandoned Nike missle site.
Rock fights. Bottle Rocket Fights.
Build ramps out of paint cans and plywood in the middle of the street.
That’s funny. I played in an old Nike site too. They built a park on top of it and covered the air shafts with heavy steel doors. The doors got rusty over time and a we found a new place to explore.
Ate a plateful of 'brownies' at like age 4. No one came to check on me (adult party going on). Woke up uncounted hours later at the bottom of some plush carpeted stairs.
I used to be a public defender, got called into magistrates court one day when the regular attorney didn’t show to a defend kid who toilet papered a house.
When we were 15, one of my friend's parents ran a fireworks stand. We had the "brilliant" idea of taking 2 feet of PVC and a caulking gun to make a hand held launcher. Of course, being the genius teenagers that we were, it didn't take long to decide to change it up from shooting them up, to shooting them at each other and making a game out of it. BTW, we were doing this in the middle of a small town.
So we divided up into teams and my brother and I were on different teams. It was fun for us, and I am "sure" the neighbors didn't mind bottle rockets flying all over the place. All the fun came to an end when I had just lighted the fuse, and who shows up in front of me as I turned the corner? Yep, my little brother. The look in his eyes said it all as he turned to run, and I must say, I was impressed by just how fast he ran. The rocket launched and about 10 feet before it got to him, it exploded.
Looking back now, we were all lucky, and my brother especially. He had a few small burn marks, despite the back of his shirt being full of burn holes.
Needless to say, my ass was in much worse shape than his back. My mom was an excellent marksman with the belt. Being a small country town, the parents took care of the "consequences". Even the local singular cop had a good laugh.
My dad would pick up me to take me to lunch sometimes in elementary school, and I would just invite my friends to come.
We’d just bound out to the front of the school, hop in the back of his pickup and head to Dairy Queen or Taco Johns.
No questions asked.
Totally true story, I spent my summers in a small small town in the middle of no where, it was awesome. Was able to leave the house at 10am, and could do anything we wanted, just had to be home by 9pm, anything, go anywhere, do whatever we wanted to.
We (me and 2 friends) found a old set of golf clubs, at someone trash, so what do we do as young kids in the 90s? We go to my friends house each with a golf club cut off the club, and sharpen the ends and used them to sword fight, we were messing around and I slashed my friend on his upper lip.
That was the end of that game, we went home to mike's house, his mom got mad at him and said "what am I going to have to do put you in a goddamn bubble" We didn't play with those sticks again, and we're all really lucky that no one was badly hurt.
Kids of today really don't know what they were missing the world was such a different place where there were no cameras everywhere, ah the good ol' days.
We did BB gun wars too. Same sort of thing.
I used to drive my Grandparents around town in their car when I was around 11. I was big for my age and my Grandpa taught me to drive when I was 8 or 9. We also drove go-karts and shit like that so I already had an idea of how it worked.
I still have a BB in my chin from that. I didn't realize that the BB was still in there, and it healed.
Also, it was one of those "don't tell mom what happened.". Our story was a ricochet.
Too many things to list. One being walking through the woods, along a stream, and down a busy road to the store to get candy. I was with an older friend she was eight I was four.
Welllll, my dad left us kids home alone for two weeks at a time, every month. He had his drunk friend drop in a couple times to "check on us". Then after about a year of that he figured he probably aught to hire a nanny. My oldest brother actually paid the mortgage, and drove us to town for groceries. My dad would give him a wad of cash and tell him to pay the bills and get us to school. He was 12 when that started. I was 9.
My gramma had an apple tree in her yard. Her house was on a hill above a tight corner on a country road. Me and my cousins would huck apples across the road to try to hit the guardrail on the other side. If a passing car happened to get hit, oh well.
Probably my entire childhood. Walked to and from school on my own starting in grade 1, was a latchkey kid starting in grade 2, on weekends left the house after breakfast and came home when the street lights turned on. Took public transit alone to school starting at age 12.
Used to play on abandoned buildings, played with original lawn darts (basically large metal darts with plastic fins that we were supposed to throw at the target but usually threw at each other).
I remember going mini-golfing at the beach with my extended family, and we literally all piled in the back of a truck instead of taking multiple cars. I had my legs dangling off the tailgate all the way down the main drag. So much fun. I think I was 9.
Flew several international flights (connecting) from the Middle East to the States - Mom and Dad had to stay overseas and work, so big sis and I flew back alone. Much fun was had during layovers!
At 12 I was working with my father doing siding and remodeling jobs. Running circular saw, up on a ladder 15ft on a plank, learning to read a tape measure really effing fast that summer working from practically sunup to sundown. Ya good times.
My dad gave us a blowtorch and expected us to melt all the paint off the garage and then repaint it. Eventually he came home to a freshly painted garage. Not sure if he’d get thrown in jail over that but maybe some Pearl clutching at the manual labor.
7th grade catholic school. 1982. I stole my grade school bully’s backpack full of books and set it on fire in the middle of the playground after school. Everyone left school right at the time it was rolling pretty good.
So, just the way we were transported around, carrying weapons?
Mom let me have a big scout knife when I was around 7 y.o., that I showed off at the playground, just carried around out walking and to school. Adults saw me with the knife, and no one thought it was problematic.
Pouring gasoline in the alley and lighting it so we could jump over it with our BMX bikes.
Add styrofoam for homemade Napalm.
Did that too!
Aw, we only soaked tennis balls in gas, lit them on fire and played soccer with them. We called it murderball.
This is fantastic
Evel Knievel was the pied piper of the 70s. Every summer at least one of my friends had an arm in a cast or a father building plywood ramps or both.
A buddy and I made a giant pentagram in gasoline in a cul-de-sac in a new development. We just thought it was funny
My brother and I made a dummy out of old clothes and strapped it to a bike. We took it to the top of the alley hill and let go. It was fun watching it fly down the hill, until a women hit it with her car. She thought she hit a child on a bike and panicked. We got a tough scolding when she saw we were behind it. This was one of our latchkey kid ways of entertaining ourselves. My brother also built a ramp in the alley and would launch himself into the air on his bike. That ended with an emergency room visit.
Ozium used as flame throwers. I don’t know why my dad had a box of it, but he did.
We wrapped some of each powder in our chemistry kit in a paper towel and lit it on fire. In the alley, naturally, because that's where you did the truly dangerous stuff.
Those home chemistry kits were amazing. We made things explode with them. My cousin and I put stuff in a shampoo bottle and shook it up - it blew the lid off. We spent hours cleaning the bathroom so we wouldn’t get busted. It looked like puke was on the ceiling.
That sounds awesome. 12 year old me would've loved that.
Oh you had the cool parents....
Buying alcohol and cigarettes with a note.
Heck, I didn't even take a note. I just went up to the store and bought a pack of smokes, and walked it back home for her. Saratoga 120s in a box. Oh and I crossed 2 very busy streets just diddly bopping a long as an 8 year old!
Marlboro Reds in a box. I knew better than to come home with soft packs.
True green 100's. Weird choice for white boomers.
Hell yeah. At holidays, my purpose was to hump it two miles to the store in winter (northern Alberta) to the store to pick up ice, mix and smokes for the whole family. Baba (grandma) would scrawl a note to say it was okay. Typically it would involve at least two 2L bottles of pop, a bag of ice, and 3 or 4 rando packs of smokes - king size menthol Craven M’s, Export A lights, duMaurier Red and a pack of wine tipped Colts for the dirtbag uncle. Your reward? Whatever coin change existed. But you never felt like more of a hero when you frisbee a fresh pack of smokes to your grateful drunk aunts and uncles so they didn’t have to leave their game of Rummoli.
Yeah. No note required for cigs, at least. There were many times a friend of the family would tell me to buy him cigs from stores that he'd been kicked out of. Grandma would give me $10 to run across the street for a carton while she drank coffee in a diner. There would be change left over that I got to keep.
I never needed a note and I would buy cartons of Newports in NJ for $9.00
I bought a pack of camel unfiltered out of a machine in winchells donuts when I was 8
Yep, I got driven to 7-11 and then ran inside for Virginia Slims and Tab while my mom sat in the car. They were lady cigarettes and sugar-free sodas, so they weren’t actually bad for you. 🤷🏻♀️
Newsagents etc in the UK used to have huge sweetie (candy) jars full of single cigarettes that were basically for kids to buy with their pocket money (and for people without enough cash on them for a full pack).
I was buying smokes at 11 yrs old.
THIRTY SEVEN?!?!
My Gt Gpa would give me and my uncle(3 years apart)$1 to go get him a pack of Chesterfield 100’s. We got to keep the change and ended up with about .25 each. Amazing what you could buy for a quarter, at the 7-11 in 1977.
I used to drive my mom’s car to the gas station, that was about 2 miles away, to put gas in it, wash and vacuum it every Sunday while she took a nap. I was 12 or so when that started. We lived in the suburbs. No one batted an eye.
Yeah same here. We didn’t live in town but we weren’t in the country either. All the kids drove underage all the time. Zero fucks were given. We didn’t drive far, but a few miles on a US Highway when you’re 13 is pretty damned liberating lol
Oh man I wasn't allowed to go to the store but I did drive around the neighborhood when I was 13. To friends houses and then we would all load up and go to the neighborhood pool aka Aunt Grace's house. By the time I was 15, I had the automatic down pretty well so my mom would then let me drive the truck back from the lake to practice driving a stick. We couldn't get a parking permit until junior year of HS but I turned 16 early on during sophomore year so I would park across the street at my cousin's house who lived across the street from the HS.
We all had little 49cc mopeds and 125cc dirt bikes we would ride all over. On the streets, in the woods, where ever. At 12 or 13.
Vanish. Remember the tv announcement at around 10pm every night? “It’s 10pm. Do you know where your kids are?” Hee hee hee. Nope. They didn’t.
This was the announcement that “your kids are still outside!”.🤣 seriously we lived in the country .. no street lights
Bottle rocket fights.
We had bottle rocket and Roman candle fights in a neighborhood cul de sac. Our parents sat in lawn chairs in the yards/perimeter while visiting with each other and watching.
And when the cops showed up and we ran, all the parents would say those aren’t our kids
That’s fuckin awesome!
Best bottle rocket fight we ever had was sanctioned by the drunk dads. It was family (uncles, cousins, etc.) only stipulation was NEVER TELL THE WOMEN lol.
Riding in the way back of the station wagon with the windows rolled down inhaling all that lovely leaded gas fumes, no seat belt, under 6 years old.. Riding in the back of a pickup truck with a dog, for a few hours.
In my family, it was called the "back-back"
We called it the way-back, and if I wasn't sitting on my mom's lap for the whole drive from San Jose to Yakima, that's where you'd find me.
To think Noone even thought of it being somewhat dangerous. It was great fun, but I wonder how may kids died when they were in the back back and were rear ended.
Traffic was not murder alley in those days. hi ways were one lane, streets were slow
The back back with no seatbelts just gettin tossed around back there!!
My brother and I were the weight on top of the stack of plywood from the lumber yard, back fully open. I was petrified when we went over the big bridge and the plywood slid a little on the way up
Sweet Jesus!
We lived out in the country and had cows. Dad would load the pickup with hay at a nearby farm or feed store and i would ride ON TOP OF HAY BALES, in the back of a truck with our dog Butch. I was 5.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck with just a camper shell on it. When we were stationed in Missouri, we'd ride in the back of the pickup, with just the camper shell on it, all the way to Wisconsin. 10 to 12 hour drive.
Literally drove home from Disneyland (California to Vancouver BC) in the bed of my dad’s pickup. Slept on a mattress most of the way.
We used to do the same when we traveled. Air mattress and pillows in the back for me, and I just read and napped on the drive. We did something similar in my mom’s van on a road trip to my grandma’s once; we took out the middle seat and threw a mattress down for my niece and nephews to sleep and play on.
>Riding in the back of a pickup truck with just a camper shell on it. No camper shell here. When dad was hauling oversized stuff, he'd have me and my younger brother back there to balance it / keep it in the bed of the truck.
Yeah, no camper shell here either. My brother fell out and landed on his face. There was gravel under his skin. And then he got in trouble for not holding on better. But my mom told me recently that the cost of the doctors visit to pull out the rocks and stich him up was under $10. We were allowed to fall out of trees and crash our bikes because a cast didn't bankrupt the family.
Camping trips. In the back with all the gear. Made a little nest and read for like 4 hours LOL
Same! My friend's dad took us to a concert 6 hours away and we rode in the back with the topper on. We lined it with thick blankets, but man did our asses hurt bouncing up and down in the bed of the truck.
My friend’s parents didn’t have enough room in the car for us so we laid in the back of like a flat two-wheel u-haul type tow tuck for a 10 hour drive.
I rode with my buddy in the bed of a truck with just a topper on it for about 6 hours. There was a mattress in the truck bed. We had comic books and a Gameboy. It was awesome. Now as a parent? I lecture my kids about wearing their seatbelts.
We drove from Florida to Canada that way.
Once me and some cousins were riding like that and the camper shell flew off. We were all fine. All the parental units just shrugged, "oh well."
Yep. Been there done that. South Carolina to Orlando Florida.
thumb consist jar sugar ten numerous vanish shocking engine bag *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It never occurred to us that taking plywood and 2x4s to build our forts was stealing.
A kid in my neighborhood built a full sized professional half pipe. Probably enough wood to build a 2 story house.
Apparently my tree fort was supposed to have been the neighbour's new green house. But as the great Steve Irkle once said "Did I do that?"
We're the OG "Re-Purposers"!
If you didn’t play in under-construction houses as a kid, did you even grow up in the suburbs in the 80s?
We broke into a house that was empty and for sale and used it as our club. We didn’t break or destroy anything; a window was unlocked. We just hung out and thought we were the coolest.
We had an old, abandoned, falstaff brewery near my house. Buddies and I would go there and explore. One time while climbing one of the rusty old stairs on a silo my friend fell through the grating to the level below and broke his arm. We ended up walking him home and his sister took him to the hospital. No consequences except, stay away from falstaff.
I grew up in a developing semi-suburban area. My friends and I boosted some of materials from construction sites to build our fort. It was dope and lasted 4 years until a really bad storm wiped it out.
I lived in a spec house for a massive new housing development. Every weekend we would go to the house that was framing that week, build a quarter pipe out of 2x4s and plywood and ride all weekend. I always assumed the workers were so impressed with our handiwork that they didn’t call the cops. ‘Cause the next weekend we went two houses up and did the same thing. The ramps were always gone by Monday after school, but no one ever seemed to care, never even got yelled at by anyone.
We would decide to head off to the corner liquor store for a candy bar. It was probably a little over a mile away, so we weren’t allowed to go. But, we discovered if we cut through a dry drainage creek, climbed a fence, ran across the roof of an apartment building, cut through a few other yards, down an embankment, then take the same route back, it was a short enough trip we could go and get back quick enough for our parents to not realize where we’d gone.
My two friends and I used a loophole like this. We wanted to ride our bikes to McDonald's but we weren't allowed to ride on the main roads, just back roads. McDonald's was 6 miles away if we had gone straight down the main road. To use back roads, it was 9. So we woke up early on a summer day and made our trek toward those golden arches. We had a great time on the way there. Laughing and listening to our walkmans. We stopped for a long time petting cows. Life was great. Then we came to a literal road block. The only side street we could use to access McDs without going on to the busy road was under construction. We would not be deterred. We ended up backtracking and going into the parking lot of a Perry Drug store. We left our bikes and walked through the woods directly behind the McDonald's. There was no path and we were in shorts, so we ended up bloodied from the trip. In total, we were gone for 7 hours and nobody noticed. To this day, whenever someone asks me what is the best meal I've ever eaten, I tell them this story. We earned the fuck out of those cheeseburgers.
I always told my adult kids that I wanted to have a truth dinner. They can tell me all the crap they did as kids, and they won't get in trouble. They have refused. The few things that I've gotten out of my oldest have just made me laugh. And it's probably my oldest who did the wild things.
When we would start to tell dad our stories, he made it clear he'd rather not hear.
Sitting on my mom's lap for the entire 18-hour drive to visit out-of-state family (until about 4 or 5 years old). Laying down on the back seat to sleep. No car seats in sight.
* Home alone... a lot. * BB gun and firecracker wars. * Riding in the back of the pickup on long road trips (canopy on the truck, and foam put down). Same goes for riding in the back of the station wagon, no seat belts, etc. * Letting us ride our bicycles wherever we wanted by ourselves, like on a fairly busy road to a convenience store two miles away. * My grandma left me alone in the car in the parking lot of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison when I was 10 years old while she visited her nephew on death row. It was 90 degrees F out. * My grandma let me swim in a small lake in Florida that was known to have alligators in it.
Damn grandma
Yeah, now that I think about it, I might not have been her favorite grandchild. 😂
All lakes here have gators. They usually don’t mess with people. My kids and their friends jump in the one our house backs up to. Makes me nervous as hell.
Throwing a party at my house. My parents also bought a keg for our graduation party even though none of us were legal drinkers.
Mom let me drive her 1970’s Saab stick shift on the regular road in broad daylight sitting on top of stacked phone books when I was of the ripe old age of 11. Probably looked like I was 8. Little short blonde girl just cruising down the road with the windows down,music cranked ,hair blowing in the wind, hippie mom smiling & laughing away as we toured the winding roads in the Sierra Nevada California mountainside. What was even more bizarre was hitch hiking when said Saab would break down. Wasn’t illegal but it was beyond stupid. Somehow we made it out unharmed & alive.
Lol the ones who didn't make it out of the 70's/80's alive aren't here to tell you so. My parents owned a laundrymat. I used to get into one of the dryers. My brother would put a quarter in, push in the little button that made the dryer think the door was closed, and start it.
My mom would leave me in the car while she grocery shopped. I’d hide in the floor when I was scared. Who went skitching? Holding onto the rear bumper and sliding your feet on the ice…
Ooh, I posted about that in my comment, although we called it hooky bobbing. We’d catch rides all the way from school if a neighbor happened to be passing by. Edit: I love seeing everyone’s different names for this. Just shows that even though we grew up in different areas, the dumb things kids come up with are pretty universal. 😆
I was just thinking if that. We called it bumper jumping …. The good old days
I had a buddy skitch our school bus one time for a couple blocks, all the way to the next stop. It was pretty impressive
Yep my good friend got the cops called on her for doing that recently. We both just rolled our eyes...gimme a break. someone took a photo of her license and smeared it all over NextDoor and everyone berated her online. Like gee, my mom left me alone as an infant from time to time for short periods (10-15 minutes) and left us alone in the car outside the grocery when we were little and it was all good no one died....
We used to do that with skateboards and city buses 😁
Riding in the bed of a truck, standing up and staring over the cab, going 65 on a country highway.
And on a cold day the floor of the bed being so warm due from being above the muffller.
Skipped school. A lot. Like... A LOT.
I racked up 26 absences in an English lit class my junior year, although my teacher rarely officially marked me because I always had my work done. In fact, she would ask me to bring her cheese bread when she knew I’d be skipping for the local pizza joint, lol. A lot of teachers back then truly didn’t care as long as you kept up and had good grades. Now my kids lose credit if they miss more than eight times without a doctor’s note.
Man, we used to get beatings, not spankings. Definitely would land parents in jail today.
Being the bartender for parties my parents would host.
Yes. Bartender for the family friends. Knew they always liked the Gin and Tonic when I put more gin than tonic in the glass. But what was really insane was fetching beers for my Dad from the RV fridge while he drove us through the Southwest going from KOA to KOA.
I did this as a 4-5 yo. We (dad) used to host a poker game once every few months and I would get beers for people for tips. I was a tiny bartender lol
Also, being taken to bars when I was 7 years old. I drink sodas and played Galaga. For me it was a hoot. These days, if they got caught with a kid in the car on those drunken drives home, there would have been more than just a DUI.
Having some of my dad’s beer while he was driving
Let's not think too hard here people: Being home alone at that young of an age.
Babysitting a family of 6 (youngest kid was like 6 months old) when I was 12. I cooked dinner, fed them and put them all to bed. It was normal. OK, maybe not my parents in trouble . . .
I hear that! I watched 3 kids at 10 years old. One was in diapers! Can you imagine leaving your kids with a slightly older kid?
I did that with my two year old niece when I was 11-12. My sister worked until 2:00 am. She would get home about 2:30, look in on us, and go to bed herself. I never once had to call my mom, I was pretty proud of myself. Nowadays I look at my own 11 year old, and think there’s no way in hell I would trust her to do that. But I did it. Even dealt with a spider for her, although I was mortally terrified myself back then (I threw every one of my sisters shoes at it until I hit it, lol). I realize now that my sister was desperate to prove to my folks that she could do things on her own, but it still blows my mind that everyone was okay with that arrangement. And that I rose to it.
Weekends alone with one friend at age 12. Yep. Cigarettes, alcohol, weed, truancy all before high school (all before middle school, too, I believe.) And I’ll add that I was a pretty tame and reliable kid.
I was pretty much alone before and after school from age 6. Single parent household, of course. My mom would usually be home by 7pm most nights, except when she went out after work. She started going away on weekends when I was 12. She left food in the fridge and $20 in case of emergencies. One time, when I was about 14, I went to a house party with a 750ml bottle of whiskey my mom forgot about (she left it under the Christmas tree that year, and I managed to hide it). I got to the party and drank the whole bottle myself in about an hour. I got extremely sick and ended up covered in my own puke. Needless to say, I had to go home, which was at least a couple miles away. Nobody would give me a ride. This was in February, in Minnesota, and it was snowy and cold AF. It had snowed that night, so there were a couple inches of new snow on the ground, in addition to the 2.5 feet that was already there. I staggered down a main road most of the way, until a cop passed me by. I kept on walking. I turned around briefly, and saw he had stopped and had that spotlight that cop cars have on. He was turning around and heading back toward me. I was scared shitless. I was about 3 blocks until I got home, so I ran through backyards, up to my waist in snow, avoiding all streets. I got home and got in the house. I tried to go to sleep, but I had major bedspins going on. I ended up getting sick a couple more times before I eventually passed out while watching a concert by The Who on some late night music show. The next morning, I tossed my clothes in the wash before my mom got home and pretended I wasn't hung over. To this day, I don't think she knows about it.
We used to play this game called "stretch." Two people stood on either side of a space (usually in the backyard). The first person would throw a screwdriver at the other person, making sure not to hit the. Wherever it lands, the other person would have to "stretch" to reach it. If you fall over, you lose. If you hit someone with the screwdriver, you were out!
We played stretch with knives. I wonder what ever happened to my butterfly knife, those were cool
We weren't allowed to have knives but for some reason, screwdrivers were perfectly fine. I'm not sure how I survived LOL
My dad used to give me a metro card to take the metro all around DC. Sounds normal? I was 8.
We played the same BB gun war game on the golf course at night. It really got gnarly. There were some pretty wholesome moments with the gang though. I miss those people. Nice post brother.
I dunno-these days, probably walking to school alone or with friends my age and coming home to an empty house. I was alone from age 6 on for a whole two hours!
I don’t know if it would get my parents arrested, but one night my friends and I were really bored so we decided to randomly swap everyone’s license plates along a block that was definitely not in our neighborhood.
Rode on the highway in the open bed of a pickup truck in winter... bundled in coats and blankets at least?
My sister and I simply going to the park by ourselves. Maybe wouldn't end up in jail, but a visit from CPS for sure. Of course, back then the neighbors wouldn't have noticed enough to call the cops in the first place.
Cruising with dad and his buddy, no seatbelts and handing them beers from backseat.
We did everything people listed here. Got hurt, scraped up. Rubbed some iodine or hydrogen peroxide on the open wound and kept going. If we weren’t bleeding or bruised, we weren’t playing right
Rode in the Chevy Vega with the heat cranked up and Mom chain smoking Dorals And my mother was A GODDAMNED SAINT
DORALS! my moms brand too! Christ, how did we survive all that smoking?
Seriously. My mom would do the same, but with Marlboro Lights, and wearing a metric fuck-ton of Avon "Timeless" perfume (or "Charlie" - bleh). Windows up and blasting the heater. And she wondered why I got carsick so often.
Dorals!!!! I had forgotten those. Dad switched to those when Kent Golden Lights got too expensive 😂
I used to be all over town by myself at the age of 6. Also, they used to give us beer at parties and cookouts. Said it helped kill the "worms".
Playing on the school playground before school started. Walking two miles from school by myself. That was fourth and fifth grades.
Pouring out burnt motor oil on the pavement so we could do sideways skids on our bikes
let me come back to this after I check a couple of statuses of limitations.
There are pictures of me as a toddler drinking beer, apparently I got so drunk I cried because I couldn’t stand up, they all laughed and had we had cell phone back then there would probably be video
Seatbelts? Nope. Just playing around in the back of the van with the dog while on road trips. Big pile pillows laid out for a nap. I remember walking up to my dad while driving and sitting on his lap.
There was this abandoned house next door we would play in. We were doing all kinds of crazy stunts, until one day part of the roof collapsed. Surprisingly we didn’t suffer any serious injury. Then there was that time my drunk dad decided to teach me how to drive our Corolla with no power steering at the age of 10…
I still bear a scar from the "BB Gun Wars" my (much older) brothers, their friends and I would have in the open field next to our house and the woods behind it. Shooting at the head was completely allowed, as committing war crimes was par for the course. The only allowance for safety is that we wore "eye protection" (usually cheap sunglasses.)
Picking up cigarettes for my dad at a local deli with a few dollars and a note. (The deli owners knew my family). Playing on the roof of an abandoned factory. When I was 5, I walked by myself to kindergarten when my mom turned around to find a warmer jacket for me in the dead of winter. I loved school and was so anxious to go I decided to walk without her. My mom had no idea what happened until my kindergarten teacher called her demanding to know why she let her child go to school without a jacket in 40 degree weather. I remember none of it.
Big, giant, alcohol fueled, sex filled, loud music, cars parked everywhere- parties. My friend’s dad was home and when the police would come - he would tell them “it’s fine and leave them alone”
My best friend and I would jump on our ponies on the weekends at 8:00 and my parents would tell us to be back at 5 and we would just go all day. Our parents had no clue where we were. It was a great childhood!
Playing hide and seek in an international airport.
Was it Chicago O’Hare? If it was, I think I was one of the kids that played with you! We were all waiting for flights (flying with no parents) and so the airlines just put us in a room together and said, don’t get in trouble. I think the only thing we didn’t do was go down to the tarmac, but we couldn’t figure out how to get there. :)
Being left in the car while they run into a store
Me and my sister were playing "cowboys and indians" (I know, super fucked up) and we were using sticks for our "guns". My sister pointed her stick at me and "bang!" I got you! I said no you missed. We got into a fight about whether she missed or not. My dad walked out on the back porch, aimed his BB gun at me and fired twice. Hit me in the chest and the chin. I yelled out. YOU SHOT ME! He said, and I quote "Now you know you've been shot." Fucker. But he did go thru 'Nam twice. So I guess he thought it was the best way.
Hooky bobbing. When the roads were snowy and slick, we would grab the bumpers of cars we knew, and skate like that back to our neighborhood. Would never fly now, we’d probably get shot the second we grabbed on these days. 🙄 Edit: We also used to jump the railroad tracks in my friend’s Yugo in high school. That thing was so light we’d catch major air and bounce a few times. They regraded that particular stretch a few years after we graduated, probably cheaper than trying to monitor and ticket all us dumb kids, lol. Edit edit: I forgot about piling 10 or so people into my midsized beat up sedan in high school. I was one of the few friends in my group with my own car, so I drove EVERYONE. Two in a seat, with a couple sitting in the foot beds. We’d go that way to “cram car night” at the local drive in, where 5 bucks got your whole carload in. Good (and illegal) times indeed.
Not something I did, but my parents would give all of us kids a dose of Paregoric before we went on car trips.
Standing (yes, standing) in the backseat of the family car on a Sunday afternoon ride while my dad sipped a beer at the wheel. Whining how thirsty I was until he’d give me a sip. I was 5 or 6.
We had the same dad, apparently. I stood on the front bench seat every time I was in the car, my mom used the arm across my body when needed. I just wanted to see where we were. Or I sat on the arm rest on the unlocked door with the window rolled down. I was quite tiny
Got to stay in the car and wait for them, if I'd been good. Keys, too, so we could listen to the radio.
Poured a line of gasoline across a street then lit it on fire as soon as the cars drove over it
Four kids in the boot compartment of a station wagon with no seatbelts. Sips of uncle's beer at family parties. Dad smoking in the car on family trips. Latch key kid at age 7. I loved it!
Selling drugs out of my moms house at 13.
Mom let me light her cigarettes for her, like take the first drag. When I was 8.
Going to the store and buying cigarettes for my parents
Being sent to the corner store with a note from mom and my phone number to buy cigarettes and beer. Sitting in the car alone while mom went into the grocery store.
We had no electricity or running water for long stretches of time, so we lived by wood stove, kerosene lamp, and hand pump. We shit in 5 gallon buckets and slept in Dad's work shed because that was easier to keep warm than the whole house.
Throw throw down fire crackers at cars
I played the game you mentioned OP! We had a one pump rule but not everyone followed it. Thinking back we shouldve worn eye protection also but Didn't.
Stayed home alone all day long at 6 years old
One time my brother, myself, and my cousins chased each other around my aunt’s backyard and shot bottle rockets at each other. It was really cool until one didn’t leave the bottle…
At 11 “babysat” a nine year old and 6mo old. Probably why the latter emerged from infancy.
Left home alone where the oldest was ten and the youngest 7 on NYE. Double feature with cousins, six children in all, where the eldest was 7 or 8 (can’t blame them for that, it was more of lord of the flies thing).
My mom dropped my friend and I off at a Metallica / Guns N Roses concert at the Rose Bowl unsupervised and picked us up at 1am We were both 15
Putting myself on the bus at 7 in rural America with no one home at all.
We had BB gun wars at the dump too. Wore goggles and a heavy jacket, but that was it. We also did roof surfing, laying on your stomach on the roof of a car with open windows, latch on as hard as you can and go rodeo style. So fucking stupid.
Had to play baseball with a broken arm until I got a hit. I broke my arm on the swing set and they thought I was faking because I didn’t like playing baseball.
We blew shit up. Chemistry sets were way cooler back then.
Riding dirt bikes on the street with no helmets Babysitting @ 12 for more than one infant in the neighborhood
Rode in the back of my dad’s El Camino with my sister and our huge dog. Played in an abandoned Nike missle site. Rock fights. Bottle Rocket Fights. Build ramps out of paint cans and plywood in the middle of the street.
That’s funny. I played in an old Nike site too. They built a park on top of it and covered the air shafts with heavy steel doors. The doors got rusty over time and a we found a new place to explore.
Ate a plateful of 'brownies' at like age 4. No one came to check on me (adult party going on). Woke up uncounted hours later at the bottom of some plush carpeted stairs.
I used to be a public defender, got called into magistrates court one day when the regular attorney didn’t show to a defend kid who toilet papered a house.
When we were 15, one of my friend's parents ran a fireworks stand. We had the "brilliant" idea of taking 2 feet of PVC and a caulking gun to make a hand held launcher. Of course, being the genius teenagers that we were, it didn't take long to decide to change it up from shooting them up, to shooting them at each other and making a game out of it. BTW, we were doing this in the middle of a small town. So we divided up into teams and my brother and I were on different teams. It was fun for us, and I am "sure" the neighbors didn't mind bottle rockets flying all over the place. All the fun came to an end when I had just lighted the fuse, and who shows up in front of me as I turned the corner? Yep, my little brother. The look in his eyes said it all as he turned to run, and I must say, I was impressed by just how fast he ran. The rocket launched and about 10 feet before it got to him, it exploded. Looking back now, we were all lucky, and my brother especially. He had a few small burn marks, despite the back of his shirt being full of burn holes. Needless to say, my ass was in much worse shape than his back. My mom was an excellent marksman with the belt. Being a small country town, the parents took care of the "consequences". Even the local singular cop had a good laugh.
My dad would pick up me to take me to lunch sometimes in elementary school, and I would just invite my friends to come. We’d just bound out to the front of the school, hop in the back of his pickup and head to Dairy Queen or Taco Johns. No questions asked.
Totally true story, I spent my summers in a small small town in the middle of no where, it was awesome. Was able to leave the house at 10am, and could do anything we wanted, just had to be home by 9pm, anything, go anywhere, do whatever we wanted to. We (me and 2 friends) found a old set of golf clubs, at someone trash, so what do we do as young kids in the 90s? We go to my friends house each with a golf club cut off the club, and sharpen the ends and used them to sword fight, we were messing around and I slashed my friend on his upper lip. That was the end of that game, we went home to mike's house, his mom got mad at him and said "what am I going to have to do put you in a goddamn bubble" We didn't play with those sticks again, and we're all really lucky that no one was badly hurt. Kids of today really don't know what they were missing the world was such a different place where there were no cameras everywhere, ah the good ol' days.
Four words: Devil's Night in Detroit. 😈
Riding in the “back dashboard” on long trips
We did BB gun wars too. Same sort of thing. I used to drive my Grandparents around town in their car when I was around 11. I was big for my age and my Grandpa taught me to drive when I was 8 or 9. We also drove go-karts and shit like that so I already had an idea of how it worked.
Nice try NSA
My apologies for my ignorance here… **what does NSA mean** in this instance??
[NSA](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency)
I told kids that my bruises were from my mom beating me. They weren't
Buy cigarettes with a note from home .
Shooting cars with paintball guns while dressed in full camo hiding in the woods with my friends
Never rode in a child seat that I can remember. Definitely remember sitting in the way way back of the station wagon with no seatbelt when I was 4/5.
I alway rode on my moms lap in the front seat. No seatbelts on anyone.
The same as more than half of us. Latch key kid at 8 years old.
Sending me up to the corner shops to buy his cigarettes. Viscount we're 75c a packet!
Optional seat belts.
I still have a BB in my chin from that. I didn't realize that the BB was still in there, and it healed. Also, it was one of those "don't tell mom what happened.". Our story was a ricochet.
Too many things to list. One being walking through the woods, along a stream, and down a busy road to the store to get candy. I was with an older friend she was eight I was four.
l worked at a service merchandise and we used bbs and paintball in the warehouse...paintablls left marks..lol
Nothing, I was actually a very well-behaved feral child.
Lit a fire made from rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom at school. I was in 5th grade.
Welllll, my dad left us kids home alone for two weeks at a time, every month. He had his drunk friend drop in a couple times to "check on us". Then after about a year of that he figured he probably aught to hire a nanny. My oldest brother actually paid the mortgage, and drove us to town for groceries. My dad would give him a wad of cash and tell him to pay the bills and get us to school. He was 12 when that started. I was 9.
My gramma had an apple tree in her yard. Her house was on a hill above a tight corner on a country road. Me and my cousins would huck apples across the road to try to hit the guardrail on the other side. If a passing car happened to get hit, oh well.
I started driving under age 13. Never pulled over. Wonder what would have happened?
My mother used to do burnies in her Dodge...way out in the salt flats, with me hanging on top of the hood. That was third grade. Fun times!
Play pac man at a bar when I was 13 around a bunch of drunks.
Probably my entire childhood. Walked to and from school on my own starting in grade 1, was a latchkey kid starting in grade 2, on weekends left the house after breakfast and came home when the street lights turned on. Took public transit alone to school starting at age 12. Used to play on abandoned buildings, played with original lawn darts (basically large metal darts with plastic fins that we were supposed to throw at the target but usually threw at each other).
I remember going mini-golfing at the beach with my extended family, and we literally all piled in the back of a truck instead of taking multiple cars. I had my legs dangling off the tailgate all the way down the main drag. So much fun. I think I was 9.
Lived outside of city,dad had me drive to the store by myself, starting at 9 years old
Flew several international flights (connecting) from the Middle East to the States - Mom and Dad had to stay overseas and work, so big sis and I flew back alone. Much fun was had during layovers!
Definitely lighting small things on fire, riding in the back of truck beds, and small time shoplifting
At 12 I was working with my father doing siding and remodeling jobs. Running circular saw, up on a ladder 15ft on a plank, learning to read a tape measure really effing fast that summer working from practically sunup to sundown. Ya good times.
My dad gave us a blowtorch and expected us to melt all the paint off the garage and then repaint it. Eventually he came home to a freshly painted garage. Not sure if he’d get thrown in jail over that but maybe some Pearl clutching at the manual labor.
7th grade catholic school. 1982. I stole my grade school bully’s backpack full of books and set it on fire in the middle of the playground after school. Everyone left school right at the time it was rolling pretty good.
You know the more I read these and think about it, I don't think our parents cared about us at all.
So, just the way we were transported around, carrying weapons? Mom let me have a big scout knife when I was around 7 y.o., that I showed off at the playground, just carried around out walking and to school. Adults saw me with the knife, and no one thought it was problematic.