And Yet I Survived: Stupid Stuff I Got Away With

[seahag50]

I am so tickled reading these.. We used to ride our bikes to the sand stone quarry to swim...sometimes we would ride 9 miles to lake erie to swim...no adults just kids.  We never rode horses with a saddle....just jump on a ride.  My sister and I used to make picnics and hike back into the fields to the woods for a picnic...our dog always came with us.  We would listen for our dad to whistle...then high tail it home.  Summers there were a lot of chores but after you could play.  Nearest kids on the next farm over....about two miles...lol...nothing was ever close.  I used to ride my bike into town.  Oberlin Ohio and go to the library get some books go to islays for an ice cream and go to Tappen square sit at the Boer war memorial and read...ah the days of my youth

[methodwriter85]

I took a ride home with a complete stranger on New Year's. And I survived and nothing happened. So there's that.

[Moose135]

44 minutes ago, methodwriter85 said:

I took a ride home with a complete stranger on New Year's. And I survived and nothing happened. So there's that.

That reminds me of this commercial:

 

[PRgal]

On 3/6/2017 at 9:43 PM, theredhead77 said:

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).

I know this is old, but it sounds like you had A LOT of fun! I can actually PICTURE that bar (probably a little smoky (I'm assuming 77 represents your birth year and smoking was still legal indoors back in the 90s)...

As for me?  On the first day of classes during my fourth year of undergrad, I went with a few friends to a local bar.  We stayed late and rather than walking back, we hitched a ride on the back of some guy's truck.  Nearly 17 years later, I can't believe we did that and made it back in one piece.  I remember the date, too.  September 10, 2001.

[riley702]

I had a fight with my college boyfriend at a party where we didn't actually know the hosts. He LEFT me there. The hosts put me up for the night, fed me breakfast and took me home safely. And taught me a great lesson in how I should have been treated by the bf. He still doesn't know what made me kick his ass to the curb and never look back.

[FairyDusted]

Great thread! I laughed. I cried. And now I hurt like hell from fits of giggles.  

I'll be back to share after I grab a snack and a few winks. I did lots of crazy shit.  

[funky-rat]

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 3:22 PM, forumfish said:

My other grandfather not only let us ride in the bed of his pickup, but he would leave the tailgate down so we could hang our legs off. Thankfully both setsof grandparents lived out in the country, so there was no real danger. *wink*

I didn't know this thread existed!  So I'm tardy to the party.

I rode in the back of many pick-ups.  My friend's dad put a cap on his, and built little seats over the wheel wells.  He put curtains over the windows, and we would go to the roller rink every weekend in that truck.

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 3:44 PM, ari333 said:

The swing set in the backyard should have been secured and cemented in. It wasn't . When we would swing the thing would rock like crazy and almost tip over.

Mine was cemented in, but the ground would get wet, and it would still pull out - cement and all.  Never tipped it, but I would try.

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 3:47 PM, Whimsy said:

It was a different time, so I feel like us "older folks" can come up with tons of these.  Still amazed sometimes how we all made it out alive!

• I rode in the way back of the old station wagon without a seatbelt

I've ridden in the way back of station wagons, and cars with a hatchback (larger ones).  I rode in the back of someone's Ford Pinto, before it was known they'd blow up.  It would backfire, and us kids would all cheer.  We thought it was funny.  My cousins in another state had a station wagon that had a flip up seat in the back, and I was amazed by it.

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 7:13 PM, ParadoxLost said:

I stayed on the school bus (not really by choice) after it took out two mailboxes and got hit by three cars.  You want to blame the snow, but the same driver also hit a stationary bulldozer on a Spring day.

My bus wrecked when I was in 3rd grade.  Driver did something stupid.  Lots of hurt kids.  Saw some scary injuries.  Still, my mom drove me to school the rest of the week, then forced me back on the bus.

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 11:35 PM, Sandman87 said:

• When I was about eight, I made a home-made "cannon" out of a length of pipe, and it fired ball bearings. It was powered by M-80s.

My dad made a "beer cannon" out of old beer cans duct taped together.  You put lighter fluid in a hole that was in one end, swing it a few times, stuff a tennis ball in the other end, then light a match.  We'd try to shoot it across the creek where we had a summer place (a building with a camper attached).

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 11:54 PM, Bastet said:

Oh, we can do family members' stupid antics?  Cool.

My dad and his closest-in-age sister were playing on the roof, when she jumped off and landed in a pile of broken glass (from what, I don't know).  He decided to check on her by jumping into the same pile.  And there's a scar on the side of his face that has something to do with pretending to be Zorro and the house sending a rock encased in leather back at him.

My dad jumped off the roof of their 2 story house (old farmhouse - 2 full stories with a full attic) because he thought he could be like Mary Poppins.

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 3:19 PM, zxy556575 said:

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.

My mom's brother fell asleep against the car door.  It opened, he rolled in to, and down a ditch.  Took 30 stitches in his head.  Mom was a fanatic about not leaning against car doors.

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 4:22 PM, ari333 said:

Lord Donia, It wasn't hitchhiking, but I took a ride from two guys in a van. I got a good vibe from them and staying at the place where my tire blew out was far far scarier, so I rolled the dice and took the offer of a ride home (three miles ish).  I got there safely.

My car broke down coming home from college.  It was 10 miles from an exit or rest area.  It was snowing.  A trucker stopped and asked if I needed a ride.  This was 1991.  No cell phones.  I thought long and hard, and took the ride.  I panicked when he drove past the rest area.  He told me that he was dropping me at the exit because there was a restaurant there and he didn't want to leave me at an unmanned rest area.  I got out at the restaurant, and he offered to take me most of the way home.  I thanked the universe that I got out once, and politely declined.

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 5:30 PM, janestclair said:

I used to play kitchen in the real oven.  When I was probably 5 or so, I put some sort of plastic colander in there and forgot about it.  My mom pre-heated the oven without opening it first, because why would you? Unsurprisingly, it melted and started a fire.  Whoops!

My mom once had someone show up at the house unexpectedly, and stuffed a counter full of dirty dishes in to the oven to hide it.  She forgot to tell me, and asked me to preheat the oven.  Melted Tupperware.  Stank bad.

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 8:22 PM, JTMacc99 said:

Exactly. That's why my one and only story of unsafe behavior of my youth was that I went there on multiple occasions. All else pales in comparison. Heh. 

I only suffered one reasonably nasty injury, when I got turned upside down on the alpine slide and left several layers of skin from my left arm on the concrete. But I was 17. Shit happened. 

I got to Action Park exactly once.  We rode the Alpine Slide.  My breaks didn't work.  I hit the kid in front of me.  My cousin ripped her brand new swimsuit.  We saw snakes in the water where the rope swing was.  Our parents drug us out.  We were disappointed.

On ‎3‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 10:21 AM, NutMeg said:

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. 

When mom was pregnant with me, they thought she might be having twins.  They checked by x-raying her.

I did stupid stuff when I got my car.  More than once, I illegally passed slow pokey people.  On hills.  Or blind corners.  Duh.  I also once almost hit a pole because my mom told me I wasn't allowed to take a portable cassette player in the car (it only had an AM radio), and I didn't listen, and bent over to pick it up when it fell.  Up in to someone's yard and almost hit a pole.  I got balloons from some friends during a fundraiser at school (a candygram type thing).  I thought I was awesome for getting balloons from friends, so rather than put them in the hatch area, I put them in the back seat to show them off.  On the way home, I went around a sharp bend, and they shifted, blocking my view.  Thankfully no one was coming the other way, because I left skid marks on the road.

My college roommate's sister had a piece of cardboard she kept in the car (it was her younger sister - and she didn't drive) that said "F***K YOU" on one side, and "A**HOLE" on the other.  She flipped the sign at someone on the freeway who chased us for miles, looking rather crazed.  When we got back to school, I "accidentally" spilled something on the sign.

Edited February 26, 2019 by funky-rat

[NutMeg]

When I got my first job after uni, after orientation we were all given keys to company cars (the pay was bad before commissions but at least cars and gas were provided back then, as we were going to ride a lot) and told to go to a place 30-45 min drive away, in kind of suburbs to another city, for the start of training. I hadn't driven since I took my driving exam, so it was quite the adventure for me... Still, I got there alright, even though very stressed. But the worst was the return journey.

Having never driven, and living in a big city, I just assumed following the signs to it would easily get me home. Huge mistake. There's a huge ring around the city, which I hadn't realized, having passed my driving licence in another country. So I found myself in the northern part of town, which has the image of being seedy/dangerous, but I had no idea and kept on driving, hoping that at some stage I would see signposts I would recognise (my life had been very much limited to the south part of the city, where everything - college, apartment, friends, etc. were located). At one point, I had to stop at a red light, and when time came to start again, I got so stressed that I couldn't manage to work the handbrake and accelerator at the same time, (yes, it was a manual drive), there was a bus honking behind me and I felt like a total fool. Then this guy came to my window, I don't know what I blubbered, I may have burst into tears, but apparently I invited him to drive the car for me... He got in, got the car out of blocking everyone, and drove all the way across the city to get me home. Along the way I got that he was a Portuguese immigrant, that I felt my pain as if I was his daughter, and that at some point I poured my heart out to him too.

I'm now ashamed to say that I was so relieved that I just thanked him and went home. And later got to realize with big regret that I had no idea how to reach him, to thank him fully, to tell him how much his help had meant to me, to see if there was anything I could do in return.

Remembering this story was triggered by something I read in this thread, but really, it should have been written in the gratitude thread. I'll always be grateful for that stranger who stepped in to help when I needed it.

---

Epilogue: the next day, I woke up an hour early and took the train. Came back with a fellow coworker who showed me which entrance to the city to take while driving. All was smooth sailing afterwards, at least as far as getting back home went.       

[Brookside]

My dad was a science teacher and bought us a Bunsen burner so we could do experiments at home.  I decided to use it one day when I was home alone (probably 11 or 12 years old) to heat up soup.  The flame was too high and I managed to set fire to the lagging on the pipe above.  I still can't believe I didn't set the entire house on fire.  And no, I never told my parents.

[Babalu]

On 12/12/2017 at 3:29 PM, seahag50 said:

I used to ride my bike into town.  Oberlin Ohio and go to the library get some books go to islays for an ice cream and go to Tappen square sit at the Boer war memorial and read...ah the days of my youth

I’m way late (and for-topic), but I gasped when I read this because I grew up in Oberlin (in town) and moved back a couple of years ago. So, hi, (former) neighbor!(P.S., the memorial is for victims of the Boxer Rebellion.) 

Slightly more on-topic - as soon as we could ride bikes, we would be gone all day and our parents just trusted we were okay (which we were). My best friend and I were each given 45 cents every Saturday - 10 cents for penny candy at Gibson’s and 35 cents for the Saturday matinee at the Apollo Theater - starting at the age of about 6 without any adult supervision and no one questioned it. We never locked our doors during the day, whether anybody was home or not. We regularly climbed to the very top of the pine tree in our side yard and shook it - I don’t know how tall it was, but it was taller than our 3-story house.

[Blergh]

On 8/30/2019 at 4:08 PM, Brookside said:

My dad was a science teacher and bought us a Bunsen burner so we could do experiments at home.  I decided to use it one day when I was home alone (probably 11 or 12 years old) to heat up soup.  The flame was too high and I managed to set fire to the lagging on the pipe above.  I still can't believe I didn't set the entire house on fire.  And no, I never told my parents.

If either of them are still living (and not the type who'd STILL try to do physical harm), it might be worth telling them so they can be thankful you and the house had a guardian angel working overtime or were VERY lucky!

 

BTW, I parasailed on vacation once- and my father said he was thankful I told him AFTER I'd already done the deed! 

[methodwriter85]

My mother used to take me to bingo Halls and casinos full of smoke when I was a little kid. Now I don't think you can even bring your child into a casino now.

[Guest]

19 hours ago, methodwriter85 said:

Now I don't think you can even bring your child into a casino now.

The ones in Las Vegas and Atlantic City that I've been in allow adult-accompanied children -- but not in the gaming areas. 

[KWalkerInc]

When I was in high school, I kept stats for the basketball teams (the girls all four years), and got to go to our state's big city with them for the week when they made the state tournament.  We would walk a short distance between the hotel where we were staying and a nearby crappy mall.  One day I was walking back from the mall with the two star players (one of whom is now a national/regional sports announcer, which is awesome).  We had to cross a very short distance across a small road that had come off the freeway.  Normally I would run as fast as I can to avoid danger even if no one was coming, but I didn't want to look panicked in front of these girls.  I didn't move slowly by any means as I walked behind them, but this city bus that apparently had no interest in slowing down came barrelling off the freeway.  It didn't even honk or anything, and I was a couple of strides onto the grass when it blew by, but it was a little close for comfort.  One of the girls was like, "You almost got hit by a bus!"   I was surprisingly calm and still playing it cool (even though look how far that had gotten me), so I just shrugged and said, "Well, I didn't, so..."  The other girl (the future announcer) already thought I was crazy anyway, but she was cool with that.

I just happened to think of this tonight because the song "The Choice Is Yours" by Black Sheep was playing on a CD while I was working out, and I had bought that cassette single on that particular shopping excursion.

[shapeshifter]

I am a very petite female who hitchhiked back and forth across North America in the 1970s.

[kieyra]

"Riding in cars with older boys we didn't really know who picked us up at the skating rink when we were way too young."

Had some issues with absentee parents. 

[luna1122]

My BFF and I, at about 18, 19, decided to go to the Knoxville World's Fair (you can do the math, I'm old). We'd recently quit our jobs and gone to Tucson to crash with friends for awhile, then came back to Kentucky, and with our last remaining $$, drove to Knoxville. No reservations, no idea where we'd stay, during a world's fair,  but whatever.

We lucked into a condo in a nearby small town, got dolled up, drove into Knoxville at night looking for something to do, looking for the strip of college bars we'd heard about. Wound up on UT campus, driving around, came upon two cute boys jogging, asked for directions. They told us if we'd give them a ride back to their dorms, they'd get changed and show us the town. We did, they did, we spent the evening drinking and dancing and making out in various little bars before chastely depositing them back at their dorms with the promise of picking them up the next day to go to the Fair together.

We stopped to get gas on the way back to the condo and two cute, slightly older guys started talking to us. Told us they were in town for a wedding but hadn't realized there would be such  problem finding rooms. Without even really discussing it, we invited them to crash at our condo. They followed us in their car. (we did, at least, pause to wonder along the ride if they might be serial killers and if we should try to ditch them, but we didn't). A lot more drinking and making out/hooking up went on, but it remained fairly innocent, and nobody murdered us in our sleep.

Next day, they left and we went and picked up the other 2 guys at their dorm and went to the Fair.

We were idiots (I read serial killer books voraciously, including the one Ann Rule wrote about Ted Bundy, when I was hit with the realization that if he'd asked me to help him out at some lake I'd have been dead meat cuz I'd think he was cute, and yet I STILL did all this shit) but somehow it all turned out okay and we lived to tell the tale.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by luna1122