As a child...

[Ambleton]

Inspired by the "today my child..." thread.

Share stories of funny and dumb stuff you did as a child, whether it's a memory or being told by your parents/siblings/grandparents etc.

I'll start....

When I was a toddler (3?) I had a big articulated wagon, probably 16" long. It was blue, a low loader with a yellow helicopter on the back, it was all metallic apart from the wheels and the helicopter rotors. My brother was sat cross legged watching the TV (6yrs older). Holding the wagon by the cab I swung it and wrapped it around my brothers head. He was out cold for several minutes but was awake before the ambulance turned up. He's okay now (28yrs later he still bangs in about it though!)

When I was 7 I found a box of brass drawing pins in a drawer and thought it would be cool to modify the darts for my (cheapo copy) nerf gun. The pin head was about the same diameter as the sucker, so I removed it and blutacked the pins on... shot my brother multiple times.... I was properly bked and the gun was broken by my mum and put in the bin. This is the only time I remember being smacked...

I would like to point out that in general I was a very placid well behaved child. My brother was an absolute nightmare and had too much energy, always causing trouble etc.

[bluezedd]

The absolute dumbest thing I can remember doing is when I was still young enough to have a baby monitor about in the house. I must have been curious about the power adaptor for it.

I plugged in the power adaptor with the socket switch off off, and put the metal end on my tongue and nothing happened.

I then did the same with the power switch on and got zapped. It didn't do any lasting damage but it scared the st out of me.

Thinking back, thankfully the adaptor must have dropped the voltage and amps otherwise that could have been pretty serious.

[vaud]

At about 3 years old

We didn't have much spare money at the time and my mum had bought her first new smart blouse in years.

She was making alterations to another piece of clothing and I thought I would copy her with the scissors.

Yup, I chopped up her brand new blouse into shreds.

Sorry mum :-(

[Glassman]

As a child I used to think all women kept their pound notes rolled up in their bra or cleavage.

One day I pounced on 'aunty Pearl' and got the roll of pound notes from within her bosom. Ever since then, whenever I sniff 'paper' money it reminds me of Aunty Pearl's boobs...

What was the question, again?

[jules_s]

OK

When I was about 6 my folks left me in their Elan+2 while they popped to a shop for '5' minutes

5 might have turned into 7 and the cigarette lighter grabbed my attention...it did leave quite round circles on the console

I've blanked out the rest. Given how car proud my dad is he must have gone utterly nuclear (as I would have)

[vaud]

jules_s said:

OK

When I was about 6 my folks left me in their Elan+2 while they popped to a shop for '5' minutes

5 might have turned into 7 and the cigarette lighter grabbed my attention...it did leave quite round circles on the console

I've blanked out the rest. Given how car proud my dad is he must have gone utterly nuclear (as I would have)

How was life with your new family?

[jules_s]

vaud said:

jules_s said:

OK

When I was about 6 my folks left me in their Elan+2 while they popped to a shop for '5' minutes

5 might have turned into 7 and the cigarette lighter grabbed my attention...it did leave quite round circles on the console

I've blanked out the rest. Given how car proud my dad is he must have gone utterly nuclear (as I would have)

How was life with your new family?

Boarding school at 10 years old - I hope the 'incident' didn't influence that decision!

[sjabrown]

I remember being left in the car with my sister whilst my mum popped in to a supermarket (it might've been Safeways or Wm Lows, certainly was a brand that no longer exists and the site is now a DFS Sofa place beside the Thistle Hotel Inverness. Anyhow after a few minutes both the car horn and the cig lighter became sources of entertainment.

[andyb28]

There are quite a few..

Aged 8, my Grandad gave me a chickens foot and showed me that if you pull the tendons, it moves. I loved it, but knew my parents would take it off me, so I hid it in a stack of bricks my Dad had. I forgot all about it and some time later, when my Dad finally got round to building the garden wall, he got quite a fright finding a severed chickens foot.

Aged 11, Mum gave me the old Christmas Fairy lights that weren't working. I was making a shorter version and cut through them whilst plugged in. There was a huge spark and the kitchen scissors had a load of big holes and black bits on them.

From about the age of 14, my Mum used to let me park her car when we got home. She has a bad back and can't turn around very far to reverse. It was great for me as I was learning to drive from a young age. My parents live next to a lane thats a public footpath.
When I was 15, my parents went on holiday with my sister and left me at home on my own. It was awesome. They had taken the car, but left my Dad's Morris Van. I thought it would be a good idea to practice my driving, so got the keys. I was only intending to drive up and down the lane a bit, but I had to reverse it out of the drive first. I had never driven a van before and you obviously cant see as much. I crashed / scraped the whole side of the van against a fence post and then had to explain what I was doing when they got home. Sure I got seriously told off, but waiting / counting down the days until they returned was worse. I was so nervous.

[mikey_b]

When I was small, I pulled a plug half out the socket, and my fingers were able to get round the back and touch the pins. Since this was the late 70s, the pins were brass all the way rather than half plastic, and consequently live. There was a bang, and I was jolted across the room. Thankfully I was basically unhurt - my mum heard the crying and came rushing in to find me several feet away from the socket. Also thankfully, modern plugs prevent that happening to my own kids.

Again whilst I was small, my dad was working up a ladder one weekend and took a break for a coffee or whatever. A few minutes later, my parents looked out the kitchen window just in time to see my little wellie boots disappear upwards as I climbed the ladder...

[otolith]

I apparently locked my dad out of the car and had to be bribed with sweets to let him in.

[paulguitar]

As a baby, I pushed a spoon into a plug socket and was thrown across the room.

At four I put my hand flat onto the iron to see if it was hot. It was.

At ten I lit a smoke bomb in the kitchen which burned a hole in the floor.


Shortly afterwards I went off to boarding school...

[jules_s]

There's a theme with plug sockets here

Anybody else dismantle their Scalextric cars and wire the motor in direct?



(pretty sure I got away with that one tbh)

[Turn7]

On the subject of plug sockets......aged about 6/7 iirc, I was playing with skewers (like all kids do right ?)

...and decided to poke them into the plug socket.....

My screams bought Mother running rather quickly.

[Radec]

When I was about 6/7, went to the local MFI showroom.
While the parents were off looking at kitchen units etc, I was playing in the aisles and then suddenly really needed a number 2.
How convenient to have all these bathrooms lined up together I probably thought.
It was a funny sight when my parents found me sitting on the toilet doing my business and then had to explain it to the sales assistant.

Another time and similar age, i was in town with my mum and went to Boots, they had an escalator and then this sign with a big red button on it, naturally that must have looked really appealing to a kid my age so I pressed it.
I'm not sure if it was supposed to bring the escalator slowly to a halt or not but it suddenly stopped really sharply, someone fell backwards and brought another 3 people that were on it at the time tumbling down it like dominoes.
I ended up with a proper earful from the security guard and a beating when I got home.

Bit older now maybe 10/11, there used to be a joke shop that me and my mates would go to.
Bought these stink bombs that came in a red box and were these little bottles filled with yellow liquid and a can of fart spray, they smelt like sick and rotten eggs.
We went to the local shopping centre and thought it would be fun to ride the escalators and give a couple of sprays to unsuspecting adults in front of us, then drop the stink bombs in the doorways to some shops and watch the mayhem unfold.
Got collared by security and taken to the backroom and got another ear bashing.
After the threat of police I gave them my home phone number and they called my parents to come pick us up which resulted in another beating when I got home.

Looking back I may have been a little st growing up

Edited by Radec on Wednesday 10th March 00:41

[Chuck328]

Try spending your first few years in South Africa.

The nasty one...

I ate a small millipede. It was black , curled up ( i guess defensive when I'd picked it up) and I apparently took a bite...Mum reckons I thought it might have been a biscuit????

( Mum had come out and had found me with it my hand )

The down right dangerous one...

"What a big worm, what a big worm" These are the words mum and the family friend ( and neighbour) heard me saying. You know where this is going...

Driveway. Myself, brother, and friend/neighbours daughter all crowded round a Green Mamba. Mum ran back inside and as she always told us the story...

Grabbed a pack of frozen sausages, hit it on the back of the neck. Enough to put it out of action, long enough for the two mums to get us inside.
Snake was already dead however, Granddad ( who lived not far away ) came round and took a shovel to it to make sure.

I would have been about 4 at the time. Mum, Grandad and Neighbour have all long since passed but those are the two overriding stories my family recalled well.

We moved back to the UK not long after. (Better schooling for us in those days at least).

( Oh and I have cini (sp) film of my brother going round the pool on his trike with my dads cowboy hat on, only for it to flop down over his face, enough for him to loose sight and tumble (trike included into the pool - £250 from YBF thank you very much)

Edited by Chuck328 on Wednesday 10th March 00:44

[Astacus]

On the theme of electrical sockets, when I was about 10, the house had an odd plug hanging from the ceiling. I thought it might be useful for recharging a 9v battery. I stuck wires in the plug ........ next thing i remember I am on the other side of the room sitting on the floor....and my elbows hurt

[davhill]

I have four cautionary tales, two involving the mains.

At age four or so, I was in my parents' bedroom. I found
the mechnism from an electric clock and I wanted to see
it run. So I poked the two wires into the smaller holes
in the round pin wall socket.It gave me a belt of course
but I didn't even cry out.But putting my fingers under
the running bathroom tap made no difference at all.

Eleven years on, I'd bought my first motorbike.
Being an Ariel Arrow, it had some rust on the pressed steel frame
so I borrowed a Black & Decker drill from a schoolfriend and set to
work with a wire brush and a pot of Kurust.
On finishing the brushing, I started coiling the drill's cable around
my right hand. I found the single strand of live cable my mate had
overlooked when extending the cable...with a chockblock. I was there,
with the live strand burning a hole in my palm. In my left hand, I had the
unpainted drill body and the world was advancing and receding before my
eyes at 50 cycles per second.
That's the recipe for a killing shock and I couldn't let either pole go. All I
could do was make unintelligble sounds until enough of my flesh burned
away to break the circuit. 'Twas scary. I still have the scar.

The next one was remarkble. In the back garden, I was playing with a
die cast Dinky model aeroplane. It was a model of a small monoplane,
a Beechcraft or a Piper. To make it 'fly' I launched it skywards. By pure
chance, it came down on top of my brother's head, causing a modest
scalp wound accompanied by a small bleed.
My Dad hit me (for which he had previous). I hadn' t thown the model at
my brother so, furious at the injustice, I tore one of the wings right off
the model. This is what was notable, I doubt that even now, I could
do such a thing to a diecast.

Lastly, another plaything shared with my brother was a little Mamod steam
engine - not a road roller or showman's engine, just a little stationary one.
Bruv could make the engine's chimney smoke on request. It was only a blank tube
and a few drops of oil put in would make smoke. We were running it in the kitchen.
Wanting to make it smoke, I thought a drop of meths would do the trick. When the neck of the
bottle caught light, I soon changed plans. I automatically jerked the bottle back
to avoid burning my hand and the quantity of meths ejected naturally ignited on
leaving the bottle.
So, the kitchen boiler was coated in burning meths and a splash had landed on the edge
of the dog's wicker basket -she was still curled up in it, with a quizzical expression.
As it happened, my parents were out in the garden, showing a prospective house
purchaser and his wife around. Dad pelted back housewards - I never saw him run
so fast before or since. But a little work with wet tea towels restored normality
and yes. the couple bought the house.

[Jonboy_t]

Probably around 4 years old, cleaned the bottom half of my dads car door with wire wool. Had seen him in the shed cleaning up the chromed hubcaps with wd40 and wire wool, assumed it was the way to get stuff sparkling so tried to help out...!

Oddly, I don’t remember him going bonkers about it, I remember him saying thank you for trying to help but I should have a grown up there as it was near the road. Probably the only time I can remember him not shouting at me for most of my childhood (and adulthood, actually)!!

[djcube]

My brother, 3-4 years old found mum's electric iron, plugged it in and ironed the recently laid kitchen vinyl floor. Not too much damage done but quite noticeable in one place.
My punishment for not stopping him, I was tucked up in bed by the way, was to have my pocket-money stopped for a few weeks. Much the same when he kicked a ball through a window, broken glass everywhere, I was at school.
Never did work out my parents reasoning for this form of punishment.