And Yet I Survived: Stupid Stuff I Got Away With

[DittyDotDot]

1 hour ago, Maharincess said:

I actually don't think its any more dangerous to let kids play outside all day now than it used to be.   Stranger abductions aren't happening more now than in the old days, its just with instant 24 hour news we hear a lot more about them than we used to.  The only problem now with letting kids play outside all day is that people will call the cops on you for not having your special snowflake in your line of vision constantly.

I'm not sure the worry is abduction as much as it's the unsupervised nature that leads youngin's getting themselves hurt, maimed or dead because no one is there to tell them not to do stupid stuff.

Personally, I'm thankful for the my unsupervised youth--taught me self reliance, to think for myself , not to mention the the creativity it fostered in me with the amount of problem solving I did--but it is pretty remarkable that my siblings or I survived some of the bonehead things we tried to do. 

[Bastet]

Nobody had a fake ID until college, so to get booze in high school my friend and I used to hang out in the parking lot of a grocery store, keep an eye out for guys who looked to be around 25-30 years old, and ask if they'd buy us a bottle of [tequila, whiskey, whatever] while they were in there.  It is unbelievable how few men we had to go through each time before we'd find someone willing to do it for us -- they were as stupid as we were; what if we were narcs?  I suspect it would be harder now; more men would think they were being set up by a hidden camera TV show.

In other high school stupidity news, I've told the story elsewhere of the game we played on the canyon road we took home from the pizza joint after football games on Friday nights -- on the straightaways, I'd turn off the car's headlights and drive in the dark.  One time, we learned the next day that there had been a murder (execution style) on that road, with a car and the bodies pushed into the canyon.  The evidence established a fairly short window of time, and it turned out we had in all likelihood passed by either the event itself or immediate aftermath -- and having the lights off meant we didn't see it, and they didn't see us (or at least couldn't see our license plates). 

[theredhead77]

Of course riding in the back of a station wagon and pick-up truck are on the list. My friends dad had a truck with a covered bed and we'd play board games in during long trips. There were gerryrigged seat-belts in the bed and as the guest I had to wear one. Looking back I'm certain it was for show.

I was always told to never talk to the guys who lived in the house between me and my childhoodBFF (aka neighbor). Turns out they sold drugs and were in and out of jail. My dad would always walk my friend to the sidewalk and watch her dad meet her, and vice versa. Even into our teens. But the neither the guys or their friends ever bothered us (as little girls or teenagers) or tried to sell us drugs.

5 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

That works up until your mid thirties.  That is the age when you go senile enough that you forget that your parents never found out about certain stunts.  At that point you accidentally start confessing shit as you reminisce about your youth, adult to adult with your parents.  Then you get that feeling that you are still twelve on the inside when they are retroactively horrified.

Shit, I told my mom something that happened to me and my best friend, as adults (years later) and she became retroactively mortified.

[zxy556575]

On 3/3/2017 at 6:42 PM, ParadoxLost said:

That works up until your mid thirties. That is the age when you go senile enough that you forget that your parents never found out about certain stunts. At that point you accidentally start confessing shit as you reminisce about your youth, adult to adult with your parents. Then you get that feeling that you are still twelve on the inside when they are retroactively horrified.

Ha! There was an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond about that, and you know Marie Barone was not happy.

Once when my mom and step dad went on vacation, my sister and I proceeded to have every high school movie version of a teen party at their cabin in the mountains. For three weekends in a row. One guy fell off the balcony and rolled quite a ways downhill, sentimental objects were broken, beer and vomit were generously spilled, there were drunk driving arrests for partygoers, cops were called, etc. My sister and I had some vague idea that we'd be able to clean everything up before mom came home, but my grandfather drove up during the week to do some repairs on the property and ultimately ratted us out.

Then: "GRANDPA! God!"
Now: "Good for him."

Edited March 5, 2017 by Lord Donia

[Maharincess]

@Bastet, the only good thing about having older brothers is that I always had somebody to buy alcohol for me. When I was around 12 or 13, my brothers figured out that if they made me do all of the bad stuff they did, I couldn't tattle on them. I did meth when I was 13,   I got so drunk at 14 that I passed out on a stranger's front porch and at 12 I  smoked my first cigarette. With them around I'm surprised I'm still alive and have never had to go to rehab. 

My friend and I (I've mentioned my psycho friend that I just can't quit) walked to school together alone from kindergarten all through high school.  We always told our parents that we took the same, safe route every day and never talked to strangers.  Yeah right. In middle school, instead of walking across the overpass we would run across an eight lane freeway, often getting stuck on the divider because there was so much traffic.

Edit- I forgot that one day we were walking to middle school and a man drove by us with his briefcase on top of his car, we yelled at him and told him.   He stopped and said that he had to get to work but if we met him at the park the next morning he would bring us donuts for telling him.    We met him in the park the next morning.  Looking back, we're lucky all we got was donuts. 

This friend and I met the summer before kindergarten and we're 51 now. I could fill up a couple of pages with the crazy, stupid, dangerous (awesome, fun memorable) things we did together.  That's why as psycho as she's become, I just can't shut her out of my life. 

Edited March 4, 2017 by Maharincess

[riley702]

My uncle once flew a single engine plane under a bridge on the highway on a dare. Hmm, maybe it's Dad's side of the family... I remember Dad had a huge woodpile he was going to burn and he was mad when I poured an old milk jug full of gasoline on it first. He improvised by using a roman candle from his fireworks stash (yeah, it's definitely Dad's side of the family) to fire at the pile until it ignited the gasoline. There was an almighty WHOOMP and the pile literally lifted off the ground for a second. That was fabulous. Another time, I wanted to burn a pile of leaves in the second driveway (there were two about 10 feet apart - one was for the farm equipment). But they were damp and wouldn't catch, so... I got a small coffee can of gasoline from the farm gas tank, which held 250 gallons and was up on stilts. I thought I was being perfectly safe throwing a lit match from 6 feet away, but there was another WHOOMP, the leafpile blew up and I burned off my bangs and had minor burns on my face. Mom swears the windows rattled and she saw the fireball through the closed curtains and was positive I'd blown up the farm gas tank (thankfully, no). My little brother grabbed the garden hose and turned it on as he ran out the back door. There was nothing coming out of it by the time he got to the second driveway, though. Because that sucker wasn't nearly that long and he'd snapped it off when it got to the end and kept running. And since I'd lit the fire, it was my fault the hose was torn up and I had to pay for a new one. Mom told me later she didn't know whether to hug me or smack the crap out of me for being so stupid. And then my Dad took me out and taught me fire safety since he knew it was futile to just tell me not to play with it. He taught me the concept of using a fuel "wick" for cases like that, where you'd trickle a little stream of gas about 6 feet away from the pile and then stand 6 MORE feet away and throw the match at that. Definitely Dad's side of the family.

[DeLurker]

When I was about 12, my family got a 2nd car - a used Datsun something or another.  It was a shift.  Somehow I managed to talk my Dad into letting me shift as he drove (but he only let me do that when no one else was in the car and I could NOT tell Mom).  At first he would tell me when to shift into the next gear or down shift, but eventually I got to the point where I could tell on my own.  It was great fun except I learned how to shift with my left hand and had a terrible time teaching my right to do it properly when I eventually got my license.

As teenagers, we basically spent most weekend nights driving around and drinking.  We'd go down to the "party" beaches and hang out with all the other kids doing the same thing.  Once the cops came and chased everyone off, you headed to Islands (a totally dark & wooded spot on one of the inlets).  You drank there until the cops came and chased you off.  One friend normally drove since she was the only one who's Dad would let her take out his car - a beat up Ford Pinto.  We just had to make sure to clean out only our beer bottles - we once made the mistake of cleaning out the empty cans and she got busted since they were his.

Going out the bedroom window in the middle of the night was common in our neighborhood.  My brother's friends would come by and knock on my window to wake him up if he was too drunk/stoned for them to wake him up.  For whatever reason it was called "toadin".

Edited March 4, 2017 by DeLurker
Because accept/except are not the same word.

[ari333]

I did stupid stuff in the woods in the day. Went flying down a zipline over a shallow ravine  that ended with a huge tree and if you didn't disembark heh soon enough you'd smash yourself into the tree. That's if you could hold on tight enough to get across the ravine.

I climbed trees so high. I could get up, but had problems getting down.

Some folks used to sneak into to the woods at night and at some places the woods were vast and mountainous. I didn't go bc I was too scared. Who knows what they were really doing out there in the night, but they said they were looking for Bigfoot or Sasquatch. They called this activity, " 'Squatchin' ." :-) as in "We're going Squatchin' " Not that I believe in Bigfoot etc, but I was too scared to go in the woods/mountains at night.

There was a guy I dated. He took me to movies, parties, dances, innocent stuff. One time he drove into this deserted cemetery for what I guessed was a makeout session. It was a small cemetery. There was one way in; You  had to back out or turn around to drive out. It was so dark and creepy. Anyone could have pulled in behind us and blocked us in. This was the 70s when a lot of couples were getting attacked while parking in cars. (remember that?) I guess it still happens, but   I hear about it less it seems.  Anyway, I was NOT in a romantic mood and wanted to leave, so we did.  That was our last date bc I was "no fun." Alrighty then.  

Edited March 4, 2017 by ari333

[theredhead77]

We used to go to a place where you could play in muddy streams and build things out of scrap wood and whatever you could find (rusty nails included).  Believe it or not, it's still open to the public! Their website sucks, Yelp Reviews here: here

2 hours ago, DeLurker said:

When I was about 12, my family got a 2nd car - a used Datsun something or another.  It was a shift.  Somehow I managed to talk my Dad into letting me shift as he drove (but he only let me do that when no one else was in the car and I could NOT tell Mom). 

As teenagers, we basically spent most weekend nights driving around and drinking.  We'd go down to the "party" beaches and hang out with all the other kids

I love my "don't tell your mother" times with my dad. I'm under no illusions that she didn't know he let me order chocolate pancakes AND hot chocolate when we went for our monthly daddy-daughter breakfasts at IHOP or that he let me get regular Coke when we went to McDonalds (mom was/is "only diet soda").
We used to hide from the beach patrol and go swimming in the ocean at night. That was really, really dumb.

[ari333]

10 minutes ago, theredhead77 said:

We used to go to a place where you could play in muddy streams and build things out of scrap wood and whatever you could find (rusty nails included).  Believe it or not, it's still open to the public! Their website sucks, Yelp Reviews here: here

My aunt would take my brother, two cousins, and me to the park. Instead of playing on the playground stuff, we'd get in the muddy, shallow creek that ran through the park. The next day in the newspaper (people read those at that time heh) it was reported that several water moccasins (poisonous snakes) were spotted in the park creek. There was a warning to stay away from the water until they could get the snakes and IDK what... relocate them? Kill them? Capture them?  IDK. Yikes.

Edited March 4, 2017 by ari333

[Sandman87]

We used to live in a very hilly neighborhood that was sort of a perimeter for a large forested area, and someone had set up one of the best swings ever in there. It was a chain with a wooden disk (for sitting on) that was attached to an overhanging oak tree branch about 30 feet (or more, I forget) off the ground, and was located right over a steep slope. The chain was just exactly the right length so that you could walk the seat up the hill a ways, then sit on it and swing out. This, naturally, put you way out above the ground on the other end of the swing...sitting on an old (and probably rotten) piece of plywood attached the end of a rusty old chain that was hanging from a branch that was probably getting ready to break off any day now. If it had broken at the far end of the arc, I bet I would have traveled about fifty yards down-slope before hitting the ground.

[Bastet]

I miss swings, especially tire swings.  Well into adulthood, a friend and I would go hang out in parks near our apartments late at night, just swinging away and talking (it was after hours, but when the cops would find us and realize we were sober and non-destructive, just acting like kids while discussing life as adults, they'd leave us be).  And I used to love coming upon an empty playground in the campground at Thanksgiving and getting on the swings.  But they took all the swings away.  (And replaced all the metal slides with plastic, but the burns from sliding down those metal suckers in the summer sun - that I don't miss.) 

[auntlada]

The hot plastic isn't really any better than the metal. It might even be worse because people don't think about the plastic being hot.

[Blergh]

On the other end of the spectrum, I found out the hard way that it wasn't so smart to lick metal ice trays when I was about six! Yep, lost the tip of my tongue that way. Thankfully, it never impaired my speech or my remaining taste buds but it makes a great war story and I can show everyone the scar to prove it!

[Bastet]

1 hour ago, auntlada said:

The hot plastic isn't really any better than the metal. It might even be worse because people don't think about the plastic being hot.

Yeah, I've read about how they can still get hot enough to burn, even though they don't get as hot as metal slides and the burn injuries went way down when the switch from metal to plastic was made, but that's a good point on people not thinking to check the temperature on a plastic slide the way they would on metal.  (I've never been on a plastic slide, because they seem to have made the slides shorter in addition to changing the material, so there's no fun to be had.)

Edited March 4, 2017 by Bastet

[emma675]

I still have a scar on the back of my leg where I lost a quarter sized patch of skin to a blazing hot metal slide one summer when I was 4 or 5. My mom says she can still hear the screams to this day.

[ari333]

59 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I miss swings, especially tire swings.  Well into adulthood, a friend and I would go hang out in parks near our apartments late at night, just swinging away and talking (it was after hours, but when the cops would find us and realize we were sober and non-destructive, just acting like kids while discussing life as adults, they'd leave us be).  And I used to love coming upon an empty playground in the campground at Thanksgiving and getting on the swings.  But they took all the swings away.  (And replaced all the metal slides with plastic, but the burns from sliding down those metal suckers in the summer sun - that I don't miss.) 

Thigh slide burns! And sometimes they'd get so sticky you couldn't even slide. Just stick and burn. Standup and jump off for relief.

5 minutes ago, emma675 said:

I still have a scar on the back of my leg where I lost a quarter sized patch of skin to a blazing hot metal slide one summer when I was 4 or 5. My mom says she can still hear the screams to this day.

THIS ^^^^^^^ screaming burning pain.

[AuntieL]

Ooh I love this topic. I was not an adventurous kid by nature but where I lived until I was 10 was on top of a hill across from a vacant plateau with a mound of what I now know was coal dirt. Used to love playing in it.  The boy next-door and I used to take turns riding our tricycles down my driveway which was a steep hill and one day I overshot the end of my driveway and ended up halfway down the wooded hill behind my house. At the bottom of that hill was a very busy road. Across that road was an amusement park. When I was about 3 or 4 I used to think the sounds of the merry-go-round were elves and I remember sneaking out at night to play with them. I never left the yard though. Unlike my brothers who at 3 and 4 ran away to the park for a day. 

[HoosierJen]

I grew up in a town of 500 (and probably half of those were my relatives) and was always allowed to play outside alone when I was a preschooler -- the only rule was that I had to stay in our yard. Once when I was three or four and playing in the yard by myself, a strange man was walking down the road and he stopped and talked to me for a minute. He then offered me candy to come with him. I said okay, but I had to get my jacket first (my mom was a stickler for always bringing a jacket or sweater when you went someplace and even as a three-year-old, I knew that rule). I went inside to get a jacket and my dad was lying on the couch watching tv. When I walked back into the living room to head out, he asked why I had a jacket and I told him "I'm going with that man and he has candy for me." My dad -- about 25 years old then and newly home from Vietnam -- jumped off the couch and sprinted through that front door in a flash. I just remember feeling very confused and not understanding why my dad jumped up like that. According to family members, Dad then chased that guy down the road for a half-mile before losing him in a cornfield.

So, here's the thing . . . this story is now legendary in my family -- as a comedy! My parents tell it and just laugh and shake their heads like it was nothing and like it doesn't bother them a bit that their preschool daughter was nearly abducted! And according to them, they didn't call the town marshall or anything....Dad just chased him and the guy ran off, end of story. I, on the other hand, am always thankful that I was a rule follower and went in to get that jacket. 

[theredhead77]

@HoosierJen how scary! 

[riley702]

Aww, that was mean!

[NutMeg]

My first "and yet I survived" was before I was born (in the late 60s)

New year's eve: merriness all around, great party, 60s style, etc. Next day (I was born in January), my mum thinks it's weird that the baby is not moving, the doc asks her what she drank, and while she lists the drinks before dinner, during, after, she realises it was quite a lot. Doctor says, that makes sense, the baby is probably drunk.

Hospital after I was born: doctor had to chase everyone away because they were all smoking around a newborn. Very Mad Man and it seems so bizarre to me. If my parents had never told me about these two episodes, I would never had believed that the parents I knew could have acted that way back then. 

Yet, I survived!!!

[meep.meep]

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 5:40 PM, Sandman87 said:

I murdered my grandfather's hatchet once, whacking it against concrete. Does that count?

You're in the club. 

[Sandman87]

11 hours ago, NutMeg said:

My first "and yet I survived" was before I was born (in the late 60s)

I sort of have one from before I was born as well. When Mom was a teen and young adult, three different doctors told her that she would never, ever be able to have children. Needless to say, I was a bit of a surprise. I'm told that my folks had been partying pretty hard in the months before she found out that she was pregnant with an impossible child, so I'm surprised that I didn't pop out with a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other and singing a Dean Martin song..

[Qoass]

Did anybody else swim in abandoned quarries?  I did but I didn't jump from the rock ledges:  I'm not crazy!

I also read The Exorcist when I was about eleven.  My friend who was one year older loaned it to me.

Interestingly, my parents got a lot more watchful once I hit around 15.  Apparently they considered risk to my virtue to be more of an issue than risk to life or limb.

[DeLurker]

As previously stated, Dad grew up in NH and so we went to visit family there on the few vacations we took.  All vacations that we ever took involved going to see family.

There were quite a few sawmills up there with huge sawdust piles as a result.  My Dad and Uncle took us once to go slide down the sawdust piles which was great fun.   And totally a new experience for us so we had a great afternoon.

We only were allowed to do it that one time though so either adult Dad decided there was more risk involved then he remembered as a kid or Mom read him the riot act.

[theredhead77]

My mom is from a tiny fishing town (Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, if you randomly know of it) so every other summer we'd go visit my grandparents for 2 weeks. BOOOOOOOOOORINGGGGGGGGGGG! Starting around 7 or 8 I was allowed to walk to the candy store on Main Street alone or up to the tourist center to watch the bagpiper play when the ferry came in. Sounds harmless, but the ferry brought over several hundred people from Maine, few of who stayed in the town. Someone could have Kaiser Soze'd me.

The last time I was there, I was 19 (legal drinking age). I walked down to the local pool hall / dive bar one night. Had fun, played some shitty games of pool and some random guys I was talking with bought me a couple beers. Nothing nefarious happened. Next day my grandfather flipped his shit because that's not the kind of place for a lady (for no reason other than it was a dive bar / pool hall).

Edited March 7, 2017 by theredhead77

[AuntieL]

When I was 10, we moved to a development across from a golf course where there was still a lot of house building going on.  All the neighborhood kids, me included, used to play at the construction sites on the weekends and afternoons when all the workers had left.  I loved going through the houses and figuring out where the walls and rooms would be - probably why I like watching House Hunters now!  There were always nails, boards with nails sticking up, tools and other sundry stuff lying around.  The best part was making our way to the second level. Of course, being the late 60s and early 70s, our parents had no idea where we were but we'd always come when called.  Being in western PA, the street was like a roller coaster (yes I really did walk to school - well the bus stop - up hill both ways!), and my brothers, at 5 and 6, used to ride their big wheels down the middle of the street.  And speaking of parents not knowing where their kids are, my Mom recalled one time when she went back to sleep after seeing us all off to school.  She woke up to sounds of someone in my brother's bedroom. She went in and found one of the neighborhood kids, not yet school age, in there playing. She called his Mom, who of course, thought he was in the back yard.  Next installment, AuntieL's adventures in boarding school.

[riley702]

My older sister stepped on a rusty nail in a little outbuilding my folks hadn't torn down yet. My brother went to go see if he could find it and stepped on it, too. Before Mom could load us all up for the trip to the doctor, I went to look for what I imagined must be a huge puddle of blood and... yep, stepped on it, too. No shoes - it was summer and we were all barefoot. Mom was so embarrassed explaining 3 kids needing tetanus shots, but the doctor just laughed and said it happened more often than one would think.

Edited March 7, 2017 by riley702

[NutMeg]

That reminds me of a neighbour of mine, little girl about 8 or so. One day walking to school she stepped on a rat (her brother, one year older, told me the story - at that point, I was already dead inside - rat phobia). Then she stepped back, then forward, and again stepped on the rat (I that point, I didn't know what was weirder, the little girl's behavior or the rat's that somehow was still hanging around, chilling, maybe waiting for friends to show up). Then she stepped on it AGAIN (girl was fearless) and he FINALLY bit her, which is how I heard about it, because she had to go get rabies vaccination... That wasn't long ago, I would walk her and her brother to school with my son when he was in primary school.    

[Sandman87]

23 hours ago, southpaw said:

My siblings and I also used to hang out around nearby construction sites without our mother finding out until:...

You reminded me: When I was about 5 years old we lived in an apartment (which my Mom still refers to as "the crackerbox") that had a lot next to it which went from abandoned orchard to new construction project. Guess where I liked to play? Had lots of fun walking up the cinderblock walls like they were stairs, and then walking along the tops of the walls..two stories above the ground.

[riley702]

Kids are fearless, and that's often the problem. :)

[riley702]

Let her touch the electric fence. I did and it didn't kill me. In fact, I tricked a niece and nephew into believing the fence was off because I grabbed it and held on long enough for them to touch it, too. Ha!

[Lisin]

2 minutes ago, riley702 said:

Let her touch the electric fence. I did and it didn't kill me. In fact, I tricked a niece and nephew into believing the fence was off because I grabbed it and held on long enough for them to touch it, too. Ha!

Yeah, it SUCKS but it won't actually kill you. I got kicked in the back by my (asshole) horse and into an electric fence when I was younger (like 18 maybe?) and I had a perfect horseshoe bruise on my back but other than that I was fine.

Speaking of horses. I went to a horseback riding day camp when starting at age 6 or 7 (summer after first grade)? Little little kid, dropped off at a farm with other little little kids who then were put on horses and rode around doing jumps etc. all being watched by high school kids. I can't believe we survived. Did it every summer for 3 or 4 years until I was "old enough" to just be allowed to stay home all day during the summer, at my grandparents house, which had a pool we were allowed to swim in. Alone. Nothing too bad ever happened. I did get hurt a couple of times falling off horses but nothing that required hospitalization. Apparently my parents decided I may as well "learn" something so they chose day camps over daycare during the summer. 

[CouchPotatoLady8]

Awesome thread!

When I was a kid, about 4-5 years old, I always saw my grandmother drinking medicine/vitamins in tablet form. And as children, we only drank the disgusting liquid ones. So everytime she would go to sleep, I would sneak in her room and steal about 3-4 tablets (Paracetamol is what I remember) and drink them all. 

Good thing I didn't die! Hahaha

[zxy556575]

As a single parent, my poor mother was always frazzled about what to do with us during the summers. My sister and I did non-swanky day camps -- so many braided crafts -- and one time she paid a neighbor to look after us, which mostly consisted of her making lunch and ignoring us the rest of the time. I'm not sure any of it was particularly dangerous, but yeah, the day camp supervisors were young teens working on their tans around the pool.

We took a taxi to day camp, for which mom bought prepaid tickets. We didn't realize it at the time but we stiffed every single driver with no tip.

Pretty sure mom looked forward very much to the three weeks we spent with dad each summer.

[BookWoman56]

I don't consider it dangerous/stupid in retrospect that as a kid, there was no expectation of coming home immediately after school. It was generally accepted that you might decide to go over to a friend's house or just find something interesting to do. In elementary school, behind the school was a wooded area that was pretty big and I spent hours wandering around looking at stuff. Adjacent to my home was also a large wooded area, and my brother and I spent countless hours there looking for arrowheads, building forts, and generally entertaining ourselves. My parents both worked, but had a full-time maid, and we lived next door to my grandparents and great-grandparents. So there was always an adult around if needed, but nobody was going to try to track down me or any of my siblings unless it got to be dark without us all being there.

What I do consider dangerous/stupid in retrospect: Around major holidays such as New Year's or 4th of July, my father would take all of us kids to a fireworks stand and get a ton of fireworks: firecrackers, roman candles, bottle rockets, cherry bombs, etc. Inevitably during the evening when we were setting them off, we would have a bottle rocket war in the back yard. Yep, we would split into two teams and deliberately fire bottle rockets at each other. I still have a small dent in my nose from one that went slightly astray. And I was probably 12 before I ever read the instructions on the roman candles and learned that you were not supposed to hold them in your hand while you set them off. Good times, but my adult self looks back at that and wonders how we all survived childhood.

[Qoass]

There's a girl scout cookie conversation going on in Pet Peeves which reminds me that as a child, I was sent door to door, after dark, alone to sell cookies to strangers who invited me into their houses to complete their order.  Can't imagine why I didn't enjoy that...

[ari333]

n/m sorry

Edited March 24, 2017 by ari333

[Quof]

Stop it.

[riley702]

I would have chosen chit chat. 

[walnutqueen]

On 3/3/2017 at 0:19 PM, Lord Donia said:

Any other hitchhikers? My friends and I used to thumb rides to the beach in the summers, even though we had access to cars. Didn't want to bother with crowded beach parking. I'd also hitch to high school if I didn't feel like walking or riding my bike. This was in the suburbs of the Santa Clara Valley, so not a small town. There were a couple of times when a driver tried to paw me, but I just got out when the car was stopped at a light. Did not think anything of it!

I was also in the habit of picking up hitchhikers when I was driving. This was in the 70s and a lot of them looked like Haight Ashbury rejects. Not a problem!

Before seat belts and recessed door handles, my sister and I both fell out of the car at separate times. We were on the expressway when I tumbled and it took a while for mom to double back. She later said she was afraid to look, but honestly. My sister got a concussion but I only ended up with a patch of skin scraped off my back. When I fell, my precious cowboy boots were knocked off and I blithely ran around in traffic to pick them up before going to the side of the road. Probably 8 years old or so. Mom later had the back seat door handles removed.

Another favorite pastime was to use a magnifying glass to see who was quicker at setting dry grass on fire in open fields or our back yard. California in the summer, so not that long.

My favorite cereal as a kid was, of all things, Grape Nuts. Four teaspoons of sugar from the bowl.

I hitchhiked in the early 1970s. In the rapey/serial killer Pacific Northwest.  I also had unprotected sex with, er, let's just say "more than a few".  Never got raped/murdered, pregnant or an STD.  My miraculous survival story doesn't end there, either (some of you true crime buffs have heard this story before) :

I was living alone in a barn on our wooded 30 acres.  One dark night my friends & I were smoking pot when there was a knock at the barn door.  Two scary looking guys said they saw my light from the road (impossible) and sat around for a bit, talking nonsense and mentioning "Charlie".  I somehow got rid of them, but as they left, one said how cool my barn walls would look painted with blood.  Yup, they were Mansonites.  I confided in my savior (biker), who knew one of the guys who'd informed on Manson & was hiding out in our neck of the woods. I didn't sleep soundly until said savior finally told me those Mansonites would never be back, and I was safe again.  I didn't ask any questions then, and still have not to this day.

[ari333]

3 minutes ago, walnutqueen said:

I hitchhiked in the early 1970s. In the rapey/serial killer Pacific Northwest.  I also had unprotected sex with, er, let's just say "more than a few".  Never got raped/murdered, pregnant or an STD.  My miraculous survival story doesn't end there, either (some of you true crime buffs have heard this story before) :

I was living alone in a barn on our wooded 30 acres.  One dark night my friends & I were smoking pot when there was a knock at the barn door.  Two scary looking guys said they saw my light from the road (impossible) and sat around for a bit, talking nonsense and mentioning "Charlie".  I somehow got rid of them, but as they left, one said how cool my barn walls would look painted with blood.  Yup, they were Mansonites.  I confided in my savior (biker), who knew one of the guys who'd informed on Manson & was hiding out in our neck of the woods. I didn't sleep soundly until said savior finally told me those Mansonites would never be back, and I was safe again.  I didn't ask any questions then, and still have not to this day.

Well, that was effing chilling to the bone. (heh it puts my hot slide playground story to shame) :-) 

That is some serious shit.  Glad you are here to tell the story, lady.

[walnutqueen]

2 minutes ago, ari333 said:

Well, that was effing chilling to the bone. (heh it puts my hot slide playground story to shame) :-) 

That is some serious shit.  Glad you are here to tell the story, lady.

Hey, at least I didn't have sex with them.  THAT would be chilling to the bone, eh.  ;-)

I also played alone every day in Stanley Park as a young child, and befriended all the old men feeding the birds & squirrels.  It wasn't until I made friends with a bleached blonde with a who basked in a scandalous TWO-PIECE BATHING SUIT, reading her paperbacks while I played with her little dog named Jetty, did my Oma raise an objection.  My Mum shut her down, though, and my park adventures continued unabated and, miraculously, unmolested and unabducted.

[ari333]

2 minutes ago, walnutqueen said:

Hey, at least I didn't have sex with them.  THAT would be chilling to the bone, eh.  ;-)

I also played alone every day in Stanley Park as a young child, and befriended all the old men feeding the birds & squirrels.  It wasn't until I made friends with a bleached blonde with a who basked in a scandalous TWO-PIECE BATHING SUIT, reading her paperbacks while I played with her little dog named Jetty, did my Oma raise an objection.  My Mum shut her down, though, and my park adventures continued unabated and, miraculously, unmolested and unabducted.

Ah... the 70s.

And yet here we are, the survivors. It's a freakin' miracle when I read here and look back on... things. :-)

Now I'm the old lady feeding the birds and squirrels and any animal I see.

[walnutqueen]

4 minutes ago, ari333 said:

Ah... the 70s.

And yet here we are, the survivors. It's a freakin' miracle when I read here and look back on... things. :-)

Now I'm the old lady feeding the birds and squirrels and any animal I see.

Ah, the 50s, 60s & 70s - if only my foolishness had stopped there & then.  I also survived a 1980s lunatic wannabe abuser (thanks, lunatic stepdad for teaching me how to survive that shit), and a 90s-00s mostly benevolent sometimes methhead.  Good Times.

You & me, both, sister, on the critter feeding.  I've never had a single one of THEM go psycho on my fat old wrinkled ass.  I have found my comfort zone, at long last!  :-)

[zxy556575]

My sister and I used to stay with our dad in San Francisco every other weekend. At the time, he was pretty alcoholic-y. One Sunday when I was around five, he took us to the Marina for an outing. He fell asleep and I fell off the dock into the oily water. I knew how to swim but some passing dude had to jump in and haul me out.

Another weekend dad felt the need to stop at one of his favorite bars. He left us in the car, saying he'd be right back. That wasn't true and my sister and I ended up wailing because we both had to pee. Passers-by took note and called the police, who took us to the station and called our mother. Pretty sure Dad got an earful.

My parents were fun drunks and I really enjoyed my freedom and independence as a child, but it wasn't what you'd call safe.

[shanndee]

I was raised by my grandparents in a small town. One summer in the mid to late 70s my grandfather made bows and arrows for a bunch of us kids out of an old tree he had cut down. These were not blunt tipped arrows, the wood had a point to them so the arrow could pierce the target he had painted onto a canvas for us.

I guess the idea was we just used them in our back yard? Well, that is not how it worked out. We took those bows everywhere with us until they eventually broke. No parent ever complained, and none of us got hurt (at least, not badly!).

That would never fly today! ... I don't know how no one lost an eye! :D 

[DeLurker]

Never hitchhiked or picked up hitchhikers.  My parents would have not been ok with that in any way, shape or form but real world risk deterrents were laid out by my older brothers.  Being relatively close in age - 5 kids in 7 years, there was almost no place I could go where one of their friends weren't in the vicinity so there was no illusion I could do something on the qt.  And their friends knew they'd get a beat down if they did not intervene to stop me from doing something stupid or didn't tell them I did something stupid.  So while they knew I drank and smoked pot once in a while, they made it abundantly clear that smoking cigarettes and doing coke or pills of any sort was not happening.  Sex never was never discussed - they made it clear to their friends and anyone I was dating that was not going to happen upon penalty of death.

So while I know a couple of my brothers occasionally hitchhiked to the beach and would pick up hitchhikers once in a while, they made it graphically clear why I should not do it or allow any of my friends too.

[Quof]

Quote

Never hitchhiked or picked up hitchhikers. 

Many years ago, I had my mother in the car and I stopped to pick up a hitchhiker.   My mother was having kittens as I pulled over "What are you doing?!? Keep going!! He could be a rapist!!! What are you doing?!?"  

He opened the door and I said "Hey, Ron. Where are you going?"   It was the janitor from my office.

And he was hitching because his license was suspended for DUI.  Had I known that, I would have put him out and let him walk.