Things you did or tried to do in your youth (that were a bit daft)

Seem to remember I (we) spent a lot of time jumping off higher and higher walls and walking across those drainage pipes over the canal.
Also burning mates with magnifying glasses, seeing how close we could throw knives at each other whilst lying on the grass and mixing up lethal cocktails from Stuff We Found In The Shed
There was also a very steep hill near where I lived with a 90 degree right turn into a side street. We used to spend many a happy hour trying to make the corner on our bikes, showers of sparks from the pedals and lots of gravel rash.
Happy days

Are you me? That all sounds like my childhood! The jumping off walls (& out of trees) thing was brought about playing “Fall Guy”. We even made our own body armour by wearing a balaclava, a body warmer and wellies ( in the height of summer). If we were lucky we could find one of our Dads’ pit helmets for really big walls or bush shelters.

It’s amazing how kids can be so ingenious that they come up with very similar ideas despite never having met etc. Another one is making “snot drops” & dropping them on your mate. A snot drop is made by lighting a plastic bag such as a sunblest bag and then dripping the burning melting plastic on someone. Nice.

oh yes, my youth 😳 😈

launching a discarded car tyre from the passenger door of a mini, it went past us down the road, gathering speed before hitting an off camber roundabout and blasting some poor buggers front door in.

making makeshift rocket launchers with a selection of fireworks and some long sections of plastic drainpipes

building massive fires out of the free newspapers we were supposed to be delivering

playing the ‘death run’ across a field with a very angry bull in residence – I remember the terror of hearing hooves behind you

Personally, being caught by my mates playing “Saturday Night Finger” with Trudy Kelly outside our local youth club on one languid summer evening ranks pretty highly on my D’oh! List.

I’ve not been allowed to forget it since…

When I was about 16 me and two mates investigated the aqueducts that lead from Loch Katrine to Glasgow through the forests north of Drymen. We found a couple of aqueduct bridges about 2 km apart that seemed to sort of line up so we headed for the further away one, donned wetsuits and headtorches and piled into a small 2 person dingy and headed into the tunnel.
The water was around 5ft deep and flowing fairly solidly at a speed you couldn’t swim against.
We had an amazing time getting swept along in the current. There were three ventilation shafts bored into the mountainside above us which were amazing to float beneath.
There was a strange effect whereby if you looked down the tunnel with the torch it seemed like the water reached the roof in the distance. This was slightly perturbing at first, but proved not to be the case.
Equally pleasing was a complete lack of any grilles or gates across the tunnel. If there had been any then we would have been very dead very soon and the Glasgow drinking water would have tasted funny for months afterwards.

Ho hum

Canoeing, that’s a bit crap.

Flame thrower aerosol cans, brut deodorant circa 1982 being a particular favourite until my mate set fire to his mums net curtains…..

Jumping streams on a BMX was pretty cool until one of our gang put his forearm bone through his skin,I still shudder at the thought of it
Worst that ever happened to me was landing on my back with the Raleigh burner on top of me after a rather misjudged take off, winded for seemed like minutes as mates p**s*d themselves at me

Remember cotter pin cranks always doing the quarter to four after a pretty heavy landing

many many experiments making home made explosives, some of which were VERY effective. we also made a compressed butane spud cannon that could launch effectively to 250m with some accuracy.

These days We would have all been nicked as terrorists 🙁

Herringthorpe Playing Fields playground of death in Rotherham.

SeeSaw jump – two of them – one long plank with a fulcrum about 3ft off the ground set in tarmac, see who can jump off at the bottom and let your mate plunge to the ground – always smarted a bit when your foot got trapped underneath.

See Saw bounce – heaviest makes their end hit the tarmac as hard as possible to try and dislodge the lighter one.

Bucking horse- 8 seats, back one like a bucking bronco – make it go as fast as possible, see who can stay longest on the back with no hands.

Spider’s web roundabout, hook legs into bars and hang down facing out, friends spin you round as fast as they can – conservation of momentum swings you out horizontal, head and arms tend to drag on the tarmac as it slows down though.

All harmless fun. 😯

Playing softball with gas lighters.
On swings, jumping off them onto your feet, when it reached as close to the horizontal position as possible.
Climbing trees together to see how high you’d get before you bottled it.
Attaching german bangers to a train set and then sticking matchbox striker along the track to create mini train wrecks.
Jumping off banks onto transitions of sand to see who could drop the furthest.

No one ever got hurt surprisingly.

Spider’s web roundabout, hook legs into bars and hang down facing out, friends spin you round as fast as they can – conservation of momentum swings you out horizontal, head and arms tend to drag on the tarmac as it slows down though.

Best thing with those is when you get a couple of older lads right in the middle, running backwards to act as an engine. You could get some serious speed up doing that, the youfs on youtube with scooters against them have no imagination.

tied a length of wool round my baby brothers neck whilst sleeping , im told i was around 4 ish, proceeded to tie other end round door handle, BUT the door opened in the way.. damn it !

Rogerthecat- I can empathise with all that, the spider roundabout being a particular focus for new kids to get initiated, lots of grazes and merriment later it was all good, jumping off the top of the big slide(15ft plus) was another feet as was running down said slide without falling over
You don’t see them that size anymore

4 air bomb repeaters and as many bangers gunpowder removed and wrapped in tin foil, using blue torch paper bury it and run like f&@k
Had a few fire engines and coppers in attendance, the crater was fantastic

Nicked a good length of magnesium ribbon from chem class and proceeded to spike my dad’s cigarettes with tightly rolled balls of magnesium.

Apparently he handed them round at a works monthly meeting with the MD…

I remember not being able to sit down for a day afterwards! 😳

Walked to the middle of Scammenden bridge and climbed over the rail and leant out backwards, often shudder at the thought of it now.

Aged about 13, I was making a delayed fuse for an air bomb to teach someone who had “irked” me a lesson, by adding one of those trick birthday cake candles that can’t be blown out to the side of it to give me a few minutes extra to get away before it went off, after leaving it outside their front window!
Unfortunately , whilst dripping hot wax onto the side of the candle to mate it to the blue touch paper ( in the days before theses namby pamby proper string fuses you get now!), said blue touch paper caught fire and started to burn in its characteristic way!

Wouldn’t have been such a problem if I hadn’t been doing this in our front room!

Blue touch paper lit the primer pyros in about 2 seconds flat, at which point nothing is gonna stop this baby ( thats why you have the namby pamby proper string fuses you get now!) and the thing started to splutter an hiss ready to pop out the airbomb in our lounge! Disbelief gave way to blind panic!

THINK FAST!!!!

Fortunately, the fireplace was empty, I shoved my arm as far up the chimney as it will go, showering my hand with red hot sparks, waited for it to give a loud pop as it expelled the airborne charge component, heard it rattling it way up the chimney, and leapt away from the fire place……..

the noise, when it came a split second later, having been channeled by the chimney back into the lounge, a shape not unlike that of a giant brick trumpet when you think about it can only be described as “JESUSFECKINGCHRISTTHEWHOLEHOUSEISCOMINGDOWNANDTHEWORLDISENDING”

Cue huge about of soot and debris falling down chimney into lounge. Ears rang for days after.

Got away with that one!

Probably not my worst pyro incident, but perhaps the most exciting!

Not far behind that was trying to make our own Napalm effects by filling a metal paint kettle with mixture of BBQ lighting gel and Petrol, and then placing an electrically detonated theatrical “maroon” in it ( basically a classic “banger” available in sizes from “puny” all the way through to “your kidding right!” but with a length of wire allowing you to detonate it connecting to a 9v PP9 battery)

Basically, we were actually closer to developing our own “daisy cutter” Fuel-Air Explosive than a napalm effect, and when you assesed the size of the scorched area, the area of defoliation, and the ammount of hair loss on exposed skin, its fair to say that 30 feet of command wire wasn’t enough!!! Not so much of a bang as an almighty

“Crack – WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMF” followed by a feeling of all over warmth!!

once after watching tarzan cartoon aged about 8ish decided to try the ivy climb up the side of a disused building, all going well till the ivy got too thin to hold my weight landed flat on my back,winded didnt try it again…

I really want to learn how to make a proper spud cannon so I can hit Wylam or Ovington from my lofty perch…and teach the Boy how to make one (and not get caught).

derelict building site – they weren’t fenced off then – took the scafolding planks and leaned them up against BIG BIG trees so could get to boughs and branches – onwards and upwards
only one hospital visit though

BTW, I havw a few 7.62mm and the odd 5.56mm NATO blanks – who’s up fo’ cordite?

I really want to learn how to make a proper spud cannon so I can hit Wylam or Ovington from my lofty perch…and teach the Boy how to make one

My dad and his fellow garage trainees put their new found welding skills to the test by making a cannon, packed it out with bangers and match heads, added some wadding and a nut and bolt cannonball, put it in a vice and he was the idiot who lit it.

Cue one perforated ear drum and permanent tinnitus, a hole through both sides of the metal dustbin they were using for a target, a hole in the horizontal metal shutter door (the type you get on bus garages) behind, a coach maker missed by inches and a nut and bolt lodged in a door frame…at least I know where I get it from…

Jesus, were you ALL pyromaniacs? 😀

When I was 13 or so me and some mates were trying to get conkers out of a tree. I decided a house brick was made for the job. The brick lodged between some branches and me and a mate ran in to gather up our spoils when the brick became dislodged. I was knocked out cold and needed 12 stitches and had four missing teeth…. 😳

I was brought up in the flatlands of Essex, now home to the Olympic MTB course- Don’t get me started. Flat, close to Europe, loads of WW2 airfields that we used to explore. I managed to accrue a fair number of 0.5 inch cannon shells, still live of course. I remember knocking holes into the ides with 6 inch nails to remove the cordite whilst dressed in a full-faced bike helmet and loads of layers of clothes, including my trusty polypropylene snorkel parka. And once I’d shken all the cordite out, I would detonate the percussion cap with an air gun.

My step-dad was an industrial chemist with ICI, and a proper clever bloke. He showed me what weedkiller and sugar can do.

And going back to air-rifles. It is very scary hearing them whistle past you as you walk along the overgrown railway line. I was never hit, nor did I hit my friends. However, my brother was not quite so lucky.

I also managed to electrocute him. He was possibly 3 or 4 years old, me three years older. I managed to persuade him to put his fingers into the terminals of a 12″ strip lamp above his bed whilst I pulled the cord… and then he let me do it again! I seem to remember thinking/ telling him that his eyes would light up or something similar. My backside was certainly lit up after that!

He now lives in Australia, I’m now in Wales. Possibly for the best.

Pugskiing

:D. We did that but without the ski wear and on a transit van roof. As we couldn’t call it trannysurfing we named it urban surfing. Oh you also had to “sing” the theme tune to Hawaii 5-0.

My favourite activity was to find a plank of wood on the beach and to use it as a wing to see how far over the sea wall you could lean into the wind as the tide raged below.

muddydwarf – I properly lolled at the magnesium cigarettes!

So many of these tales have struck a huge chord, especially the ones involving fireworks. We used to buy huge quantities of those ‘cup’ caps, empty out the powder and make jam-jar bombs. Had one go off in my face and couldn’t hear anything for a good hour afterwards.

One fine afternoon I took it into my head to climb out of a third floor bathroom window using a sisal rope tied round a toilet bowl. All went well up until I put my weight on the rope. My nine year old hands weren’t up to the job and and I slid all the way down at a surprising speed. The toilet uprooted itself with messy consequences and my hands were shredded.

Won’t start on air gun tales – the last time I bust them out on here someone was offended enough to get my post removed 😳

When I was about 10, I filled up a milk bottle with petrol from my Dads lawn mower. I placed an old rag in it and went down to the canal bridge behind my house. I placed the bottle under the bridge ( the canal went under the road) and I lit (or thought I’d lit) the rag and then ran at a speed comparable to Red Rum. After an hour or so nothing had happened but I couldn’t risk going back!

A couple of hours later there was a knock at the door and it was the 13 year old girl who lived next door. She explained that she had seen what I had done and that if I provided her with a regular supply of cigarettes (my Mum used to buy them in the 200 cartons) then my Mum and Dad wouldn’t find out. I used to sneak a cigarette or two out each day, but eventually she upped the ante and started to demand packets. As requested I started to give her a couple of packets a week. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for my Mum to twig, as she was probably loosing 40 cigarettes a week. I was questioned and my Mum went off to speak to the blackmailers parents.

I don’t think my parents found out about the milk bottle!

I was quite into bombs aged six or seven.. and I procured an old dead car battery, some wire and a milk bottle full of old turps..

I took all this to the woods across the road on a huckled sack truck.. I was part way through constructing this weapon of mass destruction when Jenny Brimicombe arrived and I somehow persuaded her to show me her fanny, which distracted me from the bomb task until this day..

Setting fire to things – didn’t really matter what to be honest
Finding dry places to skateboard – The local decommissioned warehouse security guard knew us by name and would send letters to our parents
Screamer wars – Those cheap chinese rockets at 50p for 10. We’d launch them at each other by hand (gardening gloves were classed as protective equipment) across the supermarket carpark. Didn’t matter if the place was open
We’d scale the walls of the local quarry to get to the hotel gardens at the top. No idea why as there was a perfectly servicable driveway
Playing “knock off ginger” on the houses of the local relatively violent oddballs colloquially known as “Ragga Bill” (his idea of warm clothing was more newspaper up his jumper as an idea of his sartorial code) and “Manwoman” (generally massively excentric chap who dressed as a lady whose exploits included trying to drift across the humber on a raft whilst eating his sunday lunch).
Likewise, garden creeping in parts of town where you’d get a kicking if you were caught.
Encouraging each other to “drop in” on the banks under the motorway bridge on our skateboards. We’d all done it, we’d all been concussed, grazed, bleeding, but people still tried.

Reading these tales of danger and fun it really has become a sanitised world these days, shame as I think exposure to danger is a learning curve we all need for life
Also:
Climbing big trees 25ft plus
Camping in the woods at 12/13
Jumping out your bedroom window to “see if it can be done”
Climbing drainpipes on factories/ school/ offices
Swimming in the local river/ gravel pit
Running the circular bouys above a weir from one side to the other( Trent)
Night fishing on your own at 13
Garden creeping and door knocking ( not dangerous unless caught)
Sliding down the stairs on a tray
Sliding down banisters ( watch the acorn at the bottom -ouch)
Climbing up the stairs without touching the stairs themselves
Bomb making/ pyrotechnics
Experimenting with petrol
Experimenting with electricity
Scrambling on a stripped Honda c90 grandad
Shooting your mates with a gat gun( or stronger if you were posh)
Making bikes / carts out of old bits
Shopping trolley racing
Throwing a long spiked compass into your arm as hard as you can WTF!! But we did it
Smoking gold leaf fags that you bought as singles with your mates,whoever the ash falls off on had to eat the filter, did the same with a polo mint eugh!!

The kids these days are so protected, maybe for the better but through my rose tinted spectacles it was a great laugh

When I was in primary school in south Cumbria we had to share the playing field with sheep ( I kid you not ) and at break times we used to have sheep sh*t fights. We found out that sheep poo that’s a few days old goes quite hard and when your 6-7 years old chuffing hurts when it gets thrown at you. Of cause th more daring of us used to throw the poo that was still warm 😯 That made a proper mess if it landed

Rusty Spanner – Member
Jesus, were you ALL pyromaniacs?

My younger brother did actually manage to burn the house down (well, almost)… fire brigade, made the local paper etc. I remember looking for him when I saw smoke pouring out of his bedroom window.. he was out by the back fence, trying to set fire to the fence with my dad’s lighter!

Best firework trick I can remember was waiting at the bottom of a straight road and when a car appeared at the top, put a lit rocket on its side and watch it shoot up the road, bouncing off the kerbs straight at the car.

this thread is great!

Once in PE at secondary school I was egged on to climb the monkey bars which led to the height of the gym. I then proceeded to jump off, swing on the basketball hoop, not accounting for my fractured wrist which subsequently slipped off the hoop when I got to 3 o’clock!

I fell, hard onto the wooden floor, and all I remember is the teacher leaning over me and saying, “why have you got the schools football shorts on and not your own?”.

Ambulance was rung, with everyone telling me stop being a wuss, there’s nothing wrong with you, even though I was in agony!

Imagine my delight as the doctor confirmed I’d fractured my pelvis and would have to stay in bed, in the hospital for a whole week.

Another game we used to play was splat the sheep s**t, where you take a brick from a wall, throw it into a turd and use the spray to splat your friends. I stopped playing that after an occurance with a large amount of spray back.

in 1990 a massive all night rave called Nocturnal (i think) came to the miserable little shitty mining town in Northumberland I hail from. Me and all my (just that month left school) mates all had tickets to see all the big rave acts and they were all wanting to try ‘E’…..

As we got in I felt petrified at the thought of taking drugs so bought one to look the business and an hour after everyone had theirs and they were blatantly enjoying them I thought i’d shut my mate up by popping one myself. One wasn’t enough and had three ‘E’s in one night and at 6am we left this huge marquee feeling our childhood had just been topped off with a memorable and unbeatable night.

The following 5 years I endured horrendous panic attacks, months of pyshcotherapy and hypnosis. Not sure if it was a direct result but I’d never do drugs again.

one love. 😆

Also, as everyone else seems to be pyromaniacs. You remember the gas tap for the bunsen burner? We had a go at leaving the tap on with the gas flowing for a while with no bunsen on and then lit it at the tap end. The flame was huge, and best of it all the teacher didn’t even notice, I bricked it as flames burn and take all the hair you struggled for so long to grow, directly off your body 🙁

Me and my mate fancied our chemistry teacher – Mrs. McCrink. Think young Amanda Burton.

To express our fondness for her, we’d sit at the back row of chemistry lab workbenches and drop our trousers round our ankles. We’d then ask her questions and she’d answer, oblivious to our state of undress.

Bit weird really.

I set fire to my mate’s Grandad. When I was 16 or so, me and my mate used to make ‘flame throwers’ by getting empty 2L plastic coke bottles punching a hole in the lid and spraying lighter fuel inside. Squeeze the bottle with a lighter in front, bosh, flame thrower.
Only issue was the lighter fuel would become liquid in the bottle, and would eventually start burning too, leaving you not very long to get rid of the bottle before it melts.
All good fun until we made one in my mate’s bedroom. Got it going, liquid started burning to I ran to the window to unscrew the cap and pour the burning liquid away. Unfortunately my mate’s Grandad was standing at the backdoor having a fag. He was wearing an old winter jacket that went on fire as soon as the fuel hit it. Cue angry old boy grappling with burning clothes, gets himself free he looks up and sees us at the window and legs it upstairs to get at us. We had to barricade the bedroom with the bed to keep him out. I didn’t go home till 4 in the morning when I knew he would be asleep. Never needed a wee so much in whole life…

Bit weird really.

Yep!

I set fire to my mate’s Grandad.

Post of the year 😆