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Stupid crap you did when you were a kid


deadshank

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Hoo-boy.  Let's see, I'll start with this one:

The neighbor lady was obese and all of the neighborhood kids made fun of her.  One day we were bored and I thought it would be a good idea to fuck with her.  So we made this greeting card for her.  On the outside it said, "To:  Mrs. (Obese Woman's Name).  When you opened it up it said on one side, "Fuck you, Jabba the Hutt."  On the other side was a picture of a hand shooting the rod.  Our story was going to be that we found this note in the road and that it was left by some random person.  So we ran over it a few times with our bikes to put tire marks on it and complete the alibi.  Obese lady was out mowing her grass on her sagging riding lawnmower.  We sent my little brother over to deliver the card.  He got about halfway when I panicked.  I realized at that moment the whole idea was stupid and that we would be caught and I would end up getting my ass whipped.  I screamed at my brother to come back and not give her the card.  But it was too late.  He couldn't hear me over the mower (or he chose to ignore me, knowing it was my ass).  He handed it to her and she opened it and read it.  I will never forget the look on her face.  Face contorted in anger.  She turned red.  She immediate got off the lawnmower and started coming to my house. All of the other kids scattered. I ran inside and started pleading with my mom that the neighbor lady was coming over and she was going to accuse me of writing something to her that I didn't do. My mom just said that she would be able to tell based on the handwriting if it was me.  Handwriting!  Fuck me!  Up until that point I hadn't considered I'd be identified by my handwriting!

Anyway, mom saw it, admitted it was me and apologized to the fat bitch.  Then she sent me to my room for the rest of the day to wait for my dad to get home.  I was shitting bricks the whole time, but all he did when he got home was talk to me about why the card was wrong.  In truth, I'm sure they both had a big laugh over it.

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My buddy's dad reloaded his own shotgun shells, so he had all the tools and stuff for it, including....gunpowder.  We made rocket propelled cars out of pipes and wheels we scavenged off toys.  Not sure how close we actually got to making pipe bombs and blowing off our fingers.

My buddy's dad was also a machinist so he had a shop full of tools and shit.  One time we made Chinese stars out of solder.  His dad got pissed when he saw them; apparently solder was expensive.  It was soft metal and didn't make very good throwing stars anyway.

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My friend down the street had some kind of fast petal racer and a big wheel. The big wheel was too slow to have races with so we just started crashing head on into each other with them after a long take off, jousting style. She always picked the fast petal racer cause the ramming speed was better. So I tied a brick to the handle bar to  weigh the front end down then commenced to ramming speed and slammed into her and flipped the petal car up and sideways. She never wanted the petal car after that.

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3 minutes ago, Ojo Rojo said:

My buddy's dad reloaded his own shotgun shells, so he had all the tools and stuff for it, including....gunpowder. 

.410 shell with a steel BB taped over the primer, the shot removed, additional powder put under the wad, then taped to an arrow make a pretty good Dukes of Hazard replica dynamite arrow.   

A buddies dad also taught us how to shoot a spoke.  You take a motorcycle spoke and flip the head around and barely thread back on.  Cut off some white matchheads and fill up opening, then crimp a lead shot (removed from above shotgun shells) in place.   Hold the wire of the spoke and turn the head with pliers until in compresses the match heads and it will eventually fire off.  You can also heat with a lighter to get them to fire.  

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One winter, when it actually snowed in East Texas, my brothers and some friends decided it would be fun to throw snowballs at cars driving down the street. My youngest brother spent about 20 minutes making a snowball that was the size of a snowman‘s head. He stumbled up towards the street and hurled it at an oncoming car with a direct hit.  We were all laughing and cheering until the brake lights came on, then a turn signal into our driveway.  Needless to say that was the end of our snow day. 

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My Dad had a part time gunshop so there was always shit around to get us in trouble. He was a railway mail clerk so his schedule was at Home- 2days and on the road- 2 days so we had plenty of time too. We would put .22 shorts in a loose fitting hole in his anvil and hit them with a 3 lb hammer. It would make a bang and the bullet would fall at our feet but there was little pressure to speak of.

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We used to cook off some ammunition that we “borrowed” from a neighbor. We’d start a little camp fire in the arroyos behind our house and toss the ammo in it, peeking out from behind nearby trees to see the pops. 

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@Jameslaw121

Let's see...

Brothers and I built a tree house about 30 feet up, loosened the nails from below, so that the house and the 3 of us could all fall to the ground.

Threw water balloons at hookers on Harry Hines (Dallas).

Crouched on the far side of my friend's house roof; shot bottle rockets over the other side at cars.  Fun until the police car was hit.

Built a small camp fire on the hardwood floor in my brother's room.  

 

 

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Back in the old days, Lakeway was a sleepy retirement area with a very small police force. We entertained ourselves by heading up to the golf course pro shop at night (up on  the hill, visible from a long distance), throwing a bunch of dry trees or whatever would burn into the dumpster, setting it on fire, and then waiting for the police to come so we could run from them into the various woods and yards surrounding the pro shop. 

One time we had the great idea to use model airplane / model rocket fuel to create a "tunnel of fire" in one of the golf cart paths that went under a road. We sprayed the fuel all around the circular tunnel but it inevitably rained down on us from the ceiling and curved walls. But undeterred and stupid as we were, we ignited the fuel anyway. It never created the tunnel of fire that we envisioned but did manage to set our friend Dave's legs on fire. 

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"borrowed" vacuum attachments (think plastic pipe) from our moms.. Filled said pipe w/ roman candles and had bazooka wars against the kids from across the street. Also, built large ramps from doors we found and used our banana seat Schwinn's to jump over just about anything we could find.. Broken collar bone fixed that. 

Grew up on Army bases around the States.. would steal barbed wire rolls from the pool and build forts w/ barbed wire fences that we in turn would scale w/ make shift ladders (AKA John Wayne and the Green Berets").. to get the barbed rolls we would have to climb 12 foot wire fences w/ concertina and then risk not getting caught. Dad was an officer so that would have been a rather bad deal for him and us if we were caught. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, deadshank said:

I was getting my hair cut today and the topic of stupid crap you did when you were a kid was brought up by my barber, Noe.  We laughed about what morons we were (and still are).  Sometimes you'd get caught doing stupid things and other times you didn't and nobody ever knew the better.

We laughed over the time I was about 10 or 11 and stumbled across my old man's early 1970s nudie mags, replete with curvy, busty, big-bushed hotties of the day.  I was the entrepreneurial type so I boosted them and took them out to the vacant tract of land behind the houses of our neighborhood as we would have camp outs during the summer and act like 10 year old wild Indians until the wee hours.

I set up shop in my tent with 8 - 10 Playboys and maybe a Gallery or two and the odd Oui and charged $1.00 to step into my lie-berry and peruse the offerings of fine photography, well thought out prose and commentary.  

Business was bustling as I had my fellow idiots coming in from far and wide; their money soon departing to my quickly filling coffers.  

It was all good until the last customer of the night rolled into my tent at about 11 PM.   That customer was my dear old dad; all 6' 4" / 250 lbs. bad-assed,  hard as nails Marine. I took quite a whooping that night and my ill gotten gains were confiscated on the grounds of not paying my licensing fees to him.

Years later he admitted he liked my sense proprietorship and chutzpah.

Good times.

 

Let's hear the stories.

My name is deadshank. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over eight thousand dollars in one night. Time of your life, huh kid?

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1 hour ago, Shoxthemonkey said:

8-10 year old Shox went on vacation to the Ozarks with the folks and brought home a corncob pipe. My buddy Fred had a much older brother, we had heard him talk about smoking grass and weed. Not knowing any better, we packed the bowl full of grass clippings. I figured I needed to pull air through the pipe to get it lit and damn near set my lungs on fire. I had trouble talking for a week or so and never told the folks why.

If it makes you feel any better, hiding under a bridge and smoking kitchen spices rolled up into notebook paper isn't very much fun either. 

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No shit, a state of TX agency has shipped over 100 lbs of alcohol based hand sanitizer to my house since this Covid thing started. Apparently my wife's job classification is public facing and some gubmint procurement weenie went hog wild. Same thing with masks and gloves.  I had to move it all to my storage place.  Fedex just randomly shows up with a half dozen boxes.

48 year old me wonders what 10 year old me would have set on fire with what is essentially weak assed napalm.  It burns hot, invisible flame.

48 year old me thanks my fellow citizens for the lifetime supply of foodservice quality meat handling gloves.  Really helps with salt/peppering brisket.

Edited by BearSchlong
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Oh, where do I start…

We had a 3 man slingshot and we would go to the store and buy a sack of potatoes. We would set up along the creek and hit cars as the crossed the bridge.

I think that ranks up there with the stupidest thing I have done. Definitely endangered lives.

In junior high, a buddy and I would shoplift nudie mags from the convenience store and sell them at school.

There may or may not have been a few stolen radar detectors stolen and sold to older kids once we were in 9th grade.

Allegedly.

Edited by Patricio Swayze
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In 6th grade I was pulled out of first period language arts class by the assistant principal.  My locker faced the library in the 6th grade annex and the librarian heard something moving around in my locker.  My original plan was not to leave a bag full of toads in my locker - but when the science teacher wasn't in his room before school, I didn't have a better choice.  I might have been a stupid kid, but I damn sure knew I couldn't take a bag of toads to class.  I can't imagine what the librarian and the assistant principal were thinking when they came across the noise in my locker.

Things that Patricio and Homesick will enjoy - I brought the toads to school to feed the hognose snakes in the cool science teacher's room, but the teacher started that day in the science lab on the other end of the school.  Another day, we gave the cool teacher a Texas alligator lizard in exchange for a 6 foot Western Coachwhip.   

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One friend got a hold of a cookbook written by some dude named Anarchist.  Weird name.  Anyways, there was a recipe for "vulcan hand grenades".  We found ourselves with a canon fuse lit CO2 cartridge filled with gun powder from bullets we scavenged.  Made a hell of a boom and some nasty shrapnel.  I might still have a piece in a box somewhere.

Goddamn teenage boys are stupid.

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16 minutes ago, BearSchlong said:

48 year old me wonders what 10 year old me would have set on fire with what is essentially weak assed napalm.  It burns hot, invisible flame.

Napalm, hmm.   The cops and fire department get called when a line of napalm is poured across the road and lit with a length of cannon fuse.   Only the cops get called when you repeatedly pull a dead snake across the road with fishing line.   Same as when someone discovers the fake body you made out of a manikin head, a wig and clothes stuffed with pine needles that you found at the dump and put it in the ditch on the side of the road.

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1 minute ago, Patricio Swayze said:

One friend got a hold of a cookbook written by some dude named Anarchist.  Weird name.  Anyways, there was a recipe for "vulcan hand grenades".  We found ourselves with a canon fuse lit CO2 cartridge filled with gun powder from bullets we scavenged.  Made a hell of a boom and some nasty shrapnel.  I might still have a piece in a box somewhere.

Goddamn teenage boys are stupid.

If you convince someone to strap something like this to a 5 gal can of gasoline the cops and fire department also come.   Makes a pretty big fireball/mushroom cloud in the sky or so I've been told.

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1 hour ago, The Maestro said:

One winter, when it actually snowed in East Texas, my brothers and some friends decided it would be fun to throw snowballs at cars driving down the street. My youngest brother spent about 20 minutes making a snowball that was the size of a snowman‘s head. He stumbled up towards the street and hurled it at an oncoming car with a direct hit.  We were all laughing and cheering until the brake lights came on, then a turn signal into our driveway.  Needless to say that was the end of our snow day. 

Growing up in a small town in Western NY, this was a typical evening activity. We had several spots that offered great throwing lanes and multiple escape routes. 

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My friends and I were destructive little shits, egging, breaking windows, piss in unlocked cars at night.  The dumbest thing had to be when myself and another friend were inside a dumpster and we lit it on fire with us still in it.  We had to about 10 or so maybe a bit younger, could been real trouble if we couldn’t get out.  

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4 hours ago, deadshank said:

I was getting my hair cut today and the topic of stupid crap you did when you were a kid was brought up by my barber, Noe.  We laughed about what morons we were (and still are).  Sometimes you'd get caught doing stupid things and other times you didn't and nobody ever knew the better.

We laughed over the time I was about 10 or 11 and stumbled across my old man's early 1970s nudie mags, replete with curvy, busty, big-bushed hotties of the day.  I was the entrepreneurial type so I boosted them and took them out to the vacant tract of land behind the houses of our neighborhood as we would have camp outs during the summer and act like 10 year old wild Indians until the wee hours.

I set up shop in my tent with 8 - 10 Playboys and maybe a Gallery or two and the odd Oui and charged $1.00 to step into my lie-berry and peruse the offerings of fine photography, well thought out prose and commentary.  

Business was bustling as I had my fellow idiots coming in from far and wide; their money soon departing to my quickly filling coffers.  

It was all good until the last customer of the night rolled into my tent at about 11 PM.   That customer was my dear old dad; all 6' 4" / 250 lbs. bad-assed,  hard as nails Marine. I took quite a whooping that night and my ill gotten gains were confiscated on the grounds of not paying my licensing fees to him.

Years later he admitted he liked my sense proprietorship and chutzpah.

Good times.

Let's hear the stories.

The only thing stupid about that story is that you got caught.

I wouldn’t call it stupid but we used to play a prank called the invisible rope trick. We’d stand on opposite sides of the street waiting for a car to come along and then act like we were straining to hold a rope across the road and see if we could get the driver to stop. Often they didn’t. But when they did, that was gold. Occasionally we got chased, a couple times by cops. But we knew every fence and hedgerow and back yard and back alley and there was no way you were ever going to catch us. Once someone went to my grandma’s door to complain and she dutifully gave us a stem lecture but I don’t think she really took it seriously. We weren’t hurting anyone. 

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3 hours ago, TexasBeta said:

Grew up on Army bases around the States.. would steal barbed wire rolls from the pool and build forts w/ barbed wire fences that we in turn would scale w/ make shift ladders (AKA John Wayne and the Green Berets").. to get the barbed rolls we would have to climb 12 foot wire fences w/ concertina and then risk not getting caught. Dad was an officer so that would have been a rather bad deal for him and us if we were caught. 

 

 

No shit. At Fort Brooke in San Juan, Puerto Rico an older kid painted some uncomplimentary graffiti  about the post commander’s wife on his backyard “wishing well”. Big scandal, and every kid on post above the age of 12 was interrogated by the provost until the guilty miscreant was nailed.

The family was gone within two weeks when the dad was reassigned to Fort Richardson, Alaska.

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No shit. At Fort Brooke in San Juan, Puerto Rico an older kid painted some uncomplimentary graffiti  about the post commander’s wife on his backyard “wishing well”. Big scandal, and every kid on post above the age of 12 was interrogated by the provost until the guilty miscreant was nailed.
The family was gone within two weeks when the dad was reassigned to Fort Richardson, Alaska.

That would be a tough conversation to have with the Mrs as to why you didn’t make the promotion list. That stuff is serious. They are just looking for reasons not to promote you. Glad I didn’t get caught. Friends dad didn’t make the LTC list. Rumor was his wife got sideways with regimental commander’s wife and that old hag squashed him when her husband was a general. That was the rumor.
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We also made a lot of acid bombs and brake fluid bombs.

Typically for the brake fluid bombs, we would use tablets of chlorine and break them up into small pieces and drop them into the bottle. However, one time, we used powder and being amateur chemists, we didn’t account for the reaction to be accelerated due to increased surface area. Fortunately, that time we did this one in an empty pool. The flame that shot out the mouth of the bottle nearly singed our faces and probably shot up about 4 feet.

Dumbasses.

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19 minutes ago, TexasBeta said:


That would be a tough conversation to have with the Mrs as to why you didn’t make the promotion list. That stuff is serious. They are just looking for reasons not to promote you. Glad I didn’t get caught. Friends dad didn’t make the LTC list. Rumor was his wife got sideways with regimental commander’s wife and that old hag squashed him when her husband was a general. That was the rumor.

The most dumb ass thing I recall that got an officer in trouble (cashiered, actually) was in Taiwan in 1958. No military post there, but most of us MAAG dependents lived in a cluster of housing in a suburb of Taipei.

Anyway, a captain from NY had the house next door for his cute wife & 2 kids. She was put together pretty well enough that 13 year old me noticed what a nice rack she had. One day when I came home from school, Mom said that family had been unexpectedly transferred back stateside and their house was empty.
I didn’t think much about it, but several years later Dad told me the captain had been pimping out his wife to some Chinese generals for $100/nite. The general would send a car to pick her up after their kids were asleep and bring her home a few hours later. Mom said she thought it was odd that a 30something woman would take long afternoon naps once or twice a week.
Of course the Captain was given a dishonorable discharge.

Dunno how they were caught, but my parents didn’t know what was going on. 

Edited by Armybrat
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Was probaly about 8 or 9. I was at my grandparents house where they, and my great grand parents (Nanny and Pupaw) lived.

Pupaw was a smoker, and a chewer, and one day I was hanging out in their bedroom.  I was playing with matches and lit the fringe of their white, cotton,  bed spread.  I can still see it  now 50 years later

I quickly put it out ........ I thought.

I heard my nanny call me, and headed out to the kitchen.  A couple minutes later my Pupaw is yelling the house is on fire the house is on fire !!!

it wasn't the actual house, but the bed was engulfed in flames . My Nanny and Pupaw and great uncle Everett were beating the flames out, and throwing pitchers of water on the now smoldering and stinking bed.

Of course being completely shit, out of my mind, terrified of the beating I knew I'd get from someone, I tried to deny it was me.

They weren't dumb, and I fessed up pretty quickly. My grandparents come home from work to a house,  with all the windows, and doors thrown open, stinking of smoke, and a  half burned bed. The walls, and  ceiling of their bedroom covered in soot.

 Probably the worst I ever felt as a little kid, realizing what I could have done.  Didn't get a beating, but damn sure knew I deserved one.

Stupid enough for ya ?

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The most dumb ass thing I recall that got an officer in trouble (cashiered, actually) was in Taiwan in 1958. No military post there, but most of us MAAG dependents lived in a cluster of housing in a suburb of Taipei.
Anyway, a Captain from NY had the house next door for his cute wife & 2 kids. She was put together pretty well enough that 13 year old me noticed what a nice rack she had. One day when I came home from school, Mom said that family had been unexpectedly transferred back stateside and their house was empty.
I didn’t think much about it, but several years later Dad told me the Captain had been pimping out his wife to some Chinese generals for $100/nite. The general would send a car to pick her up after their kids were asleep and bring her home a few hours later. Mom said she thought it was odd that a 30something woman would take long afternoon naps once or twice a week.
Of course the Captain was given a dishonorable discharge.
Dunno how they were caught, but my parents didn’t know what was going on. 

That’s crazy. Full bird’s wife at Fort Bliss (3rd ACR) had a taste for African American NCOs. It was known and whispered that the colonel had a little Jimbo issue. He didn’t make General.
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2 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:

So many to chose from, but here's one:

 

We took 4 steel cans, took the lids off them & duct taped them together. Used a church key to punch a hole in the bottom. Lighter fluid in the hole. Tennis ball fit in perfectly. Light. BOOM. Instant mortar. 

 

rep not just for the story but mostly for the proper spelling of "duct tape"

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Not sure 18 is a kid but I was in Pensacola for A school and one night myself and a few buddies got shit ass hammered and bought fireworks to pop on the crappy beach that is close to the barracks on base. Someone caught us (probably just watch) who wouldn't give a shit anyway but we were dumb idiots and threw the fireworks in a dumpster next to Portside which was basically a dive bar everyone went on base to play pool and hang out and that shit lit up hard. We got caught after that and had to do 30 days restriction. 

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I was a good kid until I discovered alcohol at about 14 and got a truck at 16, then it was all downhill until I got to college. We used to steal barrels and other road stuff from construction sites and block off major roads in the middle of the night. We would hook up dumpsters at stores and drag them to where the garbage trucks couldn’t get them. I used to get people at work to buy alcohol for me, I would mix up mixed drinks in the original containers and then sell them out of my truck at school. We used to shoot out neon signs with a BB gun. There is a laundry list of other stuff I probably shouldn’t post.

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One winter, when it actually snowed in East Texas, my brothers and some friends decided it would be fun to throw snowballs at cars driving down the street. My youngest brother spent about 20 minutes making a snowball that was the size of a snowman‘s head. He stumbled up towards the street and hurled it at an oncoming car with a direct hit.  We were all laughing and cheering until the brake lights came on, then a turn signal into our driveway.  Needless to say that was the end of our snow day. 

We did that in the summer with dried mud balls that were damn near rock hard. We were idiots.
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I spent the night at a friends house.  I was probably 13.  We snuck out of the house and went around the neighborhood and disconnected and stole like 20 doorbell buttonss from houses.  Just because we thought it would be funny.  It kind of is, I mean, who the fuck would steal a doorbell buttons?  Kids being dumb, that's who.

We also for some reason took a tube of muffler cement and cemented a mailbox closed and also squeezed a bunch into the keyhole of someones front door.  Saw a cop car parked out front of that house the next day.

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In high school we would skip school and head out to Pace Bend Park (nee Pale Face Park) on Lake Travis and jump off the cliffs. One time we had a watermelon. I cut it in half, hollowed out one side, put it on my head (think cone heads from old school SNL) and dove into the water.

On impact the pain was so bad I thought one ear had been ripped off.

 

Another time I tried to do a flip, landed wrong, and wrenched some weird muscles in my chest. I couldn't sit up from a lying down position for days, or move in a variety of ways. I told my parents and the doctor that i must have hurt it in football practice.

 

 

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1. Water balloons launched over a fence at cars on a major thoroughfare.

2.  Went cliff jumping without testing the depth of the water first.  Shattered the bones in my foot.  If I would’ve dove head first, and I considered it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

3. Ran a bookie operation out of my locker in high school.  Got caught.  Had sufficient blackmail material to get off with a slap on the wrist.

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