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copper sulphate crystals and told his mates they were jelly crystals
Lad at my school had the perfect scam- sold loose leaf tea as cannabis (esp to the younger less experienced kids). If they suspected anything was amiss, they couldn't tell as they'd get punished too. Whole new meaning of "you only get an OO with Typhoo"!
Remember "Train Surfing" . . . . match-head bolt-bombs, sniffing petrol, climbing on top of high industrial buildings with weak roofs.... the list goes on. How I got the 20 I'll never know.
make it out of the 80’s at all!
As Calvin Harris said, It was acceptable in the 80s!
I remember at infants school I was told off and made to stand in the corner for something (can't recall what), but I decided that the only sensible recourse was to burn the school to the ground, so I took some matches from home and persuaded my best friend Ian to set fire to the place. Luckily he set the fire outside the main building and just managed to burn down a small tree.
He was caught and fingered me, but I just denied everything and was given a boiled sweet by Mrs Barret, the head teacher for my 'honesty'.
About 8 years later I did manage to save his life with the heimlich maneuver in O level chemistry when we has passing out with a gobstopper stuck in his wind pipe - so I figure we're sort of quits now. My dad had read about this amazing procedure in the Guardian and made us all practice it!
You do some very stupid things as children....
they take turns to throttle each other just to the point of asphyxiation
Kids still do that?
Fortunately there was no smartphones when we were kids.
Kid at my school, came from a different juniors and started senior school late because he'd been dared to hacksaw a live line on the train track. He turned up when we were 2nd years, with a bit of a Simon Weston look. I'm pretty sure TikTok wasn't around in 1977
We at work are seeing at younger end kids arriving at nursery and school ‘missing’ two years of development in language, physical literacy, social skills and creativity in play. Basics like not potty trained either…
I've got kids about to go into S2 sitting in class playing with toy cars. You might be pleased to see that in nursery but it's the opposite in secondary! As a society we're going to be dealing with some of the lockdown impacts for a long time.
A lad in my year had a very, very bad time with some potassium and magnesium that he nicked from the chemistry tech lab.
And I remember playing a game with my next door neighbour where we'd throw a dart straight up in the air, then stand under it coming down until the latest possible moment, until my mum saw what we were doing and explained, via the medium of the back of her hand across the backs of our thighs, the error of our ways.
We did the dart thing as a kid too (the variant where you stand with your legs apart then have to move one leg to where the dart landed). We were playing with our cousin and she got a dart in her leg so she ran in crying to our mum and got an ice cream.
On seeing this me and my brother deliberately tried (successfully) to dart each other to get ice cream. Unfortunately mum saw what we were doing so we didn't get any. How bloody unfair!
This has been going on for nearly two generations now.
I think that as a society we've fallen for the myth that life can be made entirely safe or risk free and as a result many people have become inept at assessing risk. I hear parents talking about schools guaranteeing the safety of pupils and more worryingly I hear senior management in schools using the same language. In all of this we forget that kids are free agents and as this thread shows hugely creative in finding ways to hurt themselves and others.
Lad at my school had the perfect scam- sold loose leaf tea as cannabis (esp to the younger less experienced kids). If they suspected anything was amiss, they couldn’t tell as they’d get punished too. Whole new meaning of “you only get an OO with Typhoo”!
A kid I knew (several years younger than me) did exactly this with stock cubes. They very obviously smelled like gravy and not hash.
My brother has a scar across the back of his head from the asphyxiation thing, fell backwards onto the swings at school. That was 84 or 85.
Also managed to break his leg" tripping over" when he was running. From my vantage point they were all hacking at each others shins trying to get each other to fall into the massive puddle behind the tennis courts.
Had a graveyard next to our school so we used to play a version of wacamole using rocks as the hammer and our heads as the moles, ducking behi d the headstones. Eventually the inevitable occurred and someone got pretty seriously clonked which involved a stay in hospital. Pretty sure it was my rock that got him (can't be 100%) but in the inquest I lied through my teeth and said I was throwing pine cones and got away with it. Everyone else got in serious bother! Heh.
Isn't the problem with kids generally the parents?
Or their surrounding? Or their peers?
Idk... I don't have any.
Knowing how ****ing stupid I was and the amount of worry and stressed I caused my parents is one of the main reasons I don't want my own.
Jeez. Kids being kids innit. It’s grown adults doing moronic things for attention on social media I despair with.
What was that thing we used to do in the eighties. You’d hyperventilate crouching then immediately stand up back to a wall where a mate would then press on your chest till you blacked out. Then we found butane gas…
Isn’t the problem with kids generally the parents?
Or their surrounding? Or their peers?
Idk… I don’t have any.
There is no easy answer unfortunately. Often it *is* the parents (or other responsible adults/persons in authority/role models) like I saw outside Leeds train station a couple of weeks ago - a bloke drinking Henry Weston's cider with a kid of around 8 yrs old – both smoking rollies (no idea what was in them but that doesn't matter). With that sort of childhood, there isn't much doubt where his life could go. So very sad.
But saying that, it can sometimes be the opposite – caring parents, safe environment, rules and boundaries but the child rebels against it. Again from personal experience, we know a family with late teenage twins – the boy was head boy at the local school and the perfect example of a well-mannered and well-adjusted young adult. His twin sister – drug dealing/taking, skipping school, meeting with men to get money for drugs, suicide attempts (many), stealing/buying pain killers from multiple shops to stash to fund further suicide attempts.
Weird – absolutely no way of making sense of it all.
Making each other faint was pretty standard at my Primary School. Never thought of doing it at the top of stairs though.
Someone ate worms (fried) for a dare.
At least 1 broken leg from slides in the playground.
Someone got a bit burned in chemistry from the gas tap thing.
I got a broken toe because someone thought it would be funny to drop a weight on my foot, Wile Coyote style.
Even we kids thought the kid who accepted the dare to pee on an electric fence was a bit dim.
I was a good well behaved kid, living in a nice area and some of the stuff I can remember me and my mates doing between the ages of 8-17 horrifies me now.
Setting stuff on fire with gas hoses, matches, magnifying glasses, basically anything.
Discovering different ways of smashing each other in the face. Bulldog, hockey sticks, cricket bats, rounders bat.
Running around the neighbourhood at night with mini explosives.
Homemade knifery. Flick knives especially cool.
Homemade flamethrowers and shotguns.
Learning precisely how much alcohol/drugs/chillis your body can process by consuming whatever you can find as quickly as possible. Ideally far away from any adult supervision, with no way of contacting someone if it all goes wrong. Preferably with unfettered access to pyrotechnics for setting things on fire and attacking each other with.
Getting an ancient car and a drivers licence at 17. I’m still not convinced I should be allowed a car now.
I carried on doing stupid stuff in my 20s too but no way can I put any of that on here. When you’re in your 40s it’s really easy to forget how terrible you were as a kid and young adult.
We did similar.
In addition:
- Balloons filled with deodorant which were then ignited.
- Dissolving polystyrene in petrol until saturated and which was then ignited.
- Putting on rollerblades and then seeing how hard we could slam each other into walls.
I'm sure I've forgotten/suppressed far more and that's all before I discovered alcohol.
The kids are fine (you know, except for the total lack of a future).
My brother has a scar across the back of his head from the asphyxiation thing, fell backwards onto the swings at school. That was 84 or 85.
An octogenarian should know better!
No end of stupid things here when I was a kid including the passing out thing where someone pressed on your chest after hyperventilating. Knacker stretch where you threw a sheath knife near someone's foot for them to stretch to and many other idiotic things.
We also nearly set fire to the library waiting for the bus home by wondering if a magnifying glass could set paper (a poster) on fire through a window. It could! The library was closed that day! Thank god it smoldered and went out!!
I have a couple of degrees, been a teacher and other responsible jobs so it worked out well in the end. 😂
We used to hang plastic milk crates in trees and light them. Called a zzt zzt for the cool noise the dripping plastic made. My brother's mate was dared to put his hand under one once. He did. Through to the bone.... to the bone.
Is anyone else reading this and thinking that there's some cracking ideas here for next term Scouts programmes?
My favourite was making big paper aeroplanes, smearing vaseline on them, setting them on fire then launching them out of the window watching them crash in flames. My bedroom window opened onto fields so no big problem. Then we did the same thing at my mates house. His window looked across the street to the houses the other side. His aeroplane went straight through an open window and we had to buy the owner some new curtains! Utterly predictable as an adult, but as a 10 year old that outcome never occurred to us.
We did the throttling thing - fairly normal lower middle class comp, mid 90's.
The fun variation was to then all leg it round the corner out of sight, so that the throttlee would come round in an empty car park, and think that they had been out cold for hours
No-one died! Although a couple of those lads have since done time.
Is anyone else reading this and thinking that there’s some cracking ideas here for next term Scouts programmes?
Yep, just off to buy some darts 🙂
Is anyone else reading this and thinking that there’s some cracking ideas here for next term Scouts programmes?
Before I have up Scouts in the 80s as it clashed with Blakes 7 on a Thursday night we played this game with the scout leader where we all stood in a circle around him and he span a massive rope with a huge knot on the end around the circle at shin level. You had to jump at the right time else it wiped you out and you fell on the concrete floor. IIRC it went faster and faster till no one was left standing or he'd got bored. Not sure what badge that was for.....
My bedroom window opened onto fields so no big problem.
Dry summer, lit paraffin wax, what could possibly go wrong?
We did the throttling thing – fairly normal lower middle class comp, mid 90’s.
Can't recall us doing it in the 80s, or possibly memory loss from lack of O2 has wiped any recollection....
i think there may be an element of selection/survivorship bias at play in this thread…
Before I have up Scouts in the 80s as it clashed with Blakes 7 on a Thursday night we played this game with the scout leader where we all stood in a circle around him and he span a massive rope with a huge knot on the end around the circle at shin level. You had to jump at the right time else it wiped you out and you fell on the concrete floor. IIRC it went faster and faster till no one was left standing or he’d got bored.
Yep, we still do that (except we have a boxing glove on the end).
Aged 13 or so, a mate and I made some pretty decent yew bows and birch arrows. To make the latter more fun, we secured dart heads to the tips. What innocent fun we had hitting various targets in the football field... until I fired one at him when he wasn't looking and it stuck in his neck. I can still see him stooping forward now, with the arrow sticking out. It was an inch from his jugular. Somehow we remained really cool about it.
Then at university, my flatmates and I used to play what we called 'human dart board' in my room. Basically, 2 players face off either side of the room, each holds a dinner tray (as a shield) with one hand inside an oven glove, and throws darts at the other. It's turn-based. And it &*($ing hurts.
A lot of us boys never really grow up. And there are soooo many things I did that I don't want my son to do.
We had the lighter fuel craze. You put it on the sleeve of your jacket, lit it, and the flames burned, the jacket was undamaged.
This lasted about a week until one kid, put it on his sleeve, ignited it and the ****ing sleeve melted 😆 😆
Decided to test my crash helmet by bending over and having my mate kick me in the head, literally as hard as he could wearing a pair of large motocross boots. Knocked me over the other side of the kitchen several times. Never did me any harm….oh, hang on 😀
A lot of us boys never really grow up.
A friend-of-a-friend type fella who had been a squaddie told me once about Fish Hook Wrestling. It consists of two participants, naked, who face off to each other with their index fingers held in a hook shape. The aim of the 'sport' is to get one of their hooks up the other participants ringpiece...
i think there may be an element of selection/survivorship bias at play in this thread…
Do you think? I thought some posters may actually be posting from beyond the grave.
We had the lighter fuel craze. You put it on the sleeve of your jacket, lit it, and the flames burned, the jacket was undamaged.
Used to do that in the pub in my teenage years....
The other one was widening the gas hole in a lighter so it could create a 1 foot long jet.
Yep, just off to buy some darts 🙂
Watch the film Grown Ups - they used bows and arrows
The other one was widening the gas hole in a lighter so it could create a 1 foot long jet.
Only a foot. Try this one
Bottle of butane gas(for lighters)
Melt a small hole in the plastic lid so it fits over the nozzle. You press down the entire lid to let the gas out. Obviously the open side out.
Ignite.
3'+ jet of flame
To stop it you pull the lid away, this basically takes the flame away from the nozzle and extinguishes it.
At least 1 broken leg from slides in the playground.
Remember spiderweb roundabouts? We had one exactly like this next to school:
Put a couple of kids standing through the centre spokes acting as the 'engine' and you could get it up to hellish speeds. We used to hang on like Ripley in the airlock at the end of Aliens. Until the inevitable happened and one kid fell through it. That was a badly broken leg.
There used to be a good one of these in Keswick's Fitz Park, with a nice soft concrete landing waiting for you IIRC. Handily close to the cottage hospital.
jimmy
You can bet your arse this will be some tiktok craze
Yeah it might be as well, but I do remember kids in my junior school doing this in the early 80s, and also putting their heads down below their knees for a bit and standing up quickly to make themselves pass out.
I believe it was in Yr9 that my class' form room became a lab in the, then, new block. And I'm not even talking about the japes in the lab. The corridor where we queued to get in had no windows. Most mornings one of us would flick off the lights and yell, "BUNDLE", just before the teacher came. In the few seconds it took her to find the light switch it was utter carnage and, as the scene was illuminated, most of the class was on the floor in various contorted positions, with only one or two nerds still standing, like butter wouldn't melt etc. Glorious. Same corridor used for 'running the gauntlet' obviously.
Variation on the theme, the school nurse's office was in another building, and also had a very narrow corridor.... I can't remember how old we were when we got BCG jabs but, in brief, each injectee would have to exit the office and get out of the building, whilst trying to avoid punches on the jab spot. Many bloody shirt sleeves next lesson. Much fun was had by all. Especially me, as I had my BCG when I was very young as we lived overseas.
Boys only grammar school, of course 😆
So, a young girl in Philadelphia has died from this tik tok 'Blackout challenge', and it seems that tik tok were pushing this in their algorithms. I'm not going to post a link as I just read the headline on my Google news feed, but it was from the DM if anyone wants to look it up.
R4 had a brilliant article a while back called "Girl Stuck in Basketball Hoop" by Ian Smith. Bloody brilliant listen
Basically saying teens do dumb stuff, some get away with it, some dont. Sometimes I went through a thought process and decided against it, sometimes I went for it. I should be dead really, the stuff I did in cars and on motorbikes is madness. TBH mountain bikes and riding fast on road bikes still does this for me at 55 years old
Here is a bit of it that might explain
So, a young girl in Philadelphia has died from this tik tok ‘Blackout challenge’, and it seems that tik tok were pushing this in their algorithms.
I've just read an article about that and it's horrible. She's not the only child to die from this either.
Like social media in general, there's a lot of good being done out there, but with little or no regulation on shit like this, one does worry for kids (especially) who can be bombarded with this stuff so much more readily than all the word of mouth we encountered in our day.
Sad times.