Oh the carefree days of our teen years. Unfortunately, some teens make the worst mistakes of their lives in their youth—and these stories are proof.
1. Moooove It
I grew up in Texas. I don't remember how the subject came up, but the general consensus was that you can't tip cows cause they're too big. There was that one guy, though, that swore that he and his cousins go out cow-tipping all the time. He was such a jerk about it we all went out one night to one of the local pastures just to prove him wrong. What a terrible mistake.
We snuck up to one and tried to push it over. It was like trying to move a brick wall. It ended up just getting angry and kicked out at us and caught me right in the chest. I ended up in the emergency room with two broken ribs. In the end, we proved that Lucas was full of it and you can't actually tip cows. Now we know.
2. Construction Zone
Not sure if this was dumb or awesome, but for my eighteenth birthday, we went around in three cars taking signs/cones from roadwork areas at about three in the morning. Not enough that you'd notice, but one or two pieces from each setup. It seemed random—but we had a devious plan. Next, we went and closed off part of a road, with all the proper signage and markings.
It took three weeks before people realized no one was showing up at this road work area and called the transit authority to find out what was going on. A week later, it was all gone.
3. Sneaky
I snuck out to do teenagerly things at around midnight and got back at around four in the morning. I very slowly, agonizingly slowly, took my keys out of my pocket, selected the correct key, inserted it into the front door lock at a speed of one tumbler per fortnight, and rotated it counterclockwise while palming the rest of the keys so as to not let them jingle and successfully unlocked the door. I removed the key from the lock at the same snail's pace and put my keys back in my right front pocket.
Then, when I went to reach for the doorknob...I rang the doorbell. That was my demise.
4. Hairless
One time when I was a teenager I drank too much and thought it would be a great idea to shave my whole body for some reason. I'm pretty hairy so it took all night, and then I had to explain it to everyone until it grew back. I don't swim competitively or anything so I'm still not sure what my rationale was at the time.
5. Caught On Tape
I was probably around age 13. It was the early 1980s. My dad had surplus reel-to-reel magnetic tapes, or maybe it was 8-tracks. You know how you can pull it really easily? Cool huh? Anyway while waiting for some friends to finish dinner I took the tape to the soccer field. There was a nice hill beyond the goalposts.
I thought it would be great to wrap some of the tape from one goalpost to the other, then ride my bike down the hill...bursting through the tape like I won a race (I've never won a race). It was a total disaster. I did too many rounds of tape, so all those strands of tape just stretched across my chest (didn't break) which suspended me in the air like Wile E. Coyote as my bike continued across the field.
I landed on my tailbone, in pain, embarrassed, praying no one saw my wonderful failure of a race finish.
6. Two-By-Four Wheel Drive
When I was a teenager I once sat on the roof of my car with my legs through my sunroof, tied two-by-fours to my legs, and ropes to my steering wheel. I tried to drive my car like a stagecoach. I thought it was the most brilliant invention at the time. I bet you can imagine how THAT ended. It "worked," but the car ended up in a ditch. I don’t regret a second of it.
7. Torched
At my school, we had this class where you got to work with metal. I got put in it as a freshman, since they sort of have five main electives you can take, and we had to try all of them at least once. In order to work in the workshop, we had to pass this basic safety test, but I didn't want to take it. I didn't show up on the day of our safety training/test, and the next day, since my teachers were REALLY irresponsible, they just assumed I took the test and let me in.
I basically spent every day of class around big, heavy, dangerous equipment that a barely trained freshman should REALLY not be operating. Especially me, since I had zero clue what to do the whole time. I basically just observed what everyone else was doing, and tried to copy it, often messing it up or breaking something once or twice.
I haven't even gotten to the most dangerous part yet. Part of the workshop was welding. Now, I had no clue how to ignite the torch, and apparently, if you did it wrong, you could cause the tanks that supply the gas to blow up and cause life-threatening injuries. I usually had either the teacher or someone else ignite it, but when they were unavailable, I tried a few times and managed to do it.
But from the sounds my blow torch was making, I think I almost caused a serious accident at least once. Then, for whatever reason, I got selected to do something called arc welding, which uses high voltage or something. I have no clue, because once again I had no idea what was going on, but from the look of all the protective gear they gave me, it was probably even more dangerous.
At least with the blow torch thing, I had a vague idea of what to do, but not with the arc welding thing. In the end, I have no idea how I passed that class, no clue how I never got blamed for all the dangerous reckless things I did, no clue just how many times I came close to seriously hurting someone, and I sure don't know how I never even injured myself once!
8. Seen The Light
I owned this camera that had a really bright flash. It was so bright that if you took a picture of someone like a meter and a half away all you would see is a white outline then the background. I put the flash right up to my eye and took a picture. That eye was blind for about a minute and everything that was white appeared orange for the next 30 minutes. Yes, I was a moron when I was 16.
9. Leap Of Faith
I climbed a 30-foot tree and jumped feet first into water that I didn't know the depth of and couldn't see the bottom of. It ended up being six feet deep. Thankfully it was just enough for me not to get injured. I later became a lifeguard and am now a paramedic. Now I get paid to deal with people as stupid as I was.
10. Pre-Game
I ate an extremely strong edible two hours before playing in the senior vs. staff basketball game in front of the entire school. It didn't do too bad but it was still the highest that I have ever been. I mean I literally had moments where pretty much all I could see looked like TV static. It was scary but we ended up winning and I never got in trouble for it.
11. The Wrong Brew
On the weekends we would wait until about ten at night and we would go "garage hopping". We would drive through nicer neighborhoods looking for anyone at that point who had left their garage open. We would take a peek to see if there was an outdoor fridge in the garage, and if so, we would sneak in to see if there were any brewskis. The biggest score I ever had was a full unopened case. I thought I was going to be the hero of the party that night. We get back to the house of our waiting friends with our prize and one of them tells me I'm an idiot.
That's when I realized how stupid I was. It was Sharps 0%.
12. Kitchen Viking Ceremony
When I went into middle school I took all my elementary school papers and books and put them in my kitchen garbage bin and soaked it with lighter fluid. After my kitchen garbage bin ignited and had two to three-foot flames spewing out, I started throwing towels on it to put out the fire, then they caught on fire too. I used my sink hose thing to put out the fire. All that remained was a mushy ball of molten plastic. Oh, and I was inside the entire time.
I nearly burnt down my house doing some stupid Viking ascension ceremony. And my parents did find out. I actually had two separate beatings for it. One for actually doing it, and another for lying about it. I threw away the molten lob after it cooled. I told them later I accidentally threw away the kitchen garbage bin when I was taking out the trash. My foolproof lie failed when they realized the ceiling had burnt marks.
13. All Pain, No Pleasure
My mom had this nail polish remover that came in a small jar with a sponge that had a hole in the middle, where all you did was stick your finger in it, move it up and down and it would take the nail polish off. I had an amazing idea. I decided to use it to whack off. I had never felt so much pain and burning in my life. Ya, not so amazing.
14. Hotel Hot Tub
We would break into this hotel and use their jacuzzi and their sauna all the time. Then one day I’m drinking at a bar and a guy next to me says, "Hey you're one of the idiots that keeps breaking into this hotel I work at. It’s funny, but I'm gonna have to call the authorities one of these times". We stopped our antics after that night.
15. The Pain Game
My friends and I decided it was a great idea to turn a bicycle upside-down, push the pedals hard to spin the back tire extremely fast, and put our bare skin on it to see who could take the most pain in the strangest place. I won by getting a tire burn on my nutsack. I can’t say we were the most intelligent kids back then…
16. Field Fire
I was about 13 or 14 and hanging out with a buddy on a hot 90-degree summer day in Washington State. It must have been just after the 4th of July because I had some leftover bottle rockets and other assortments of fireworks. We lived next to this big farm field that had some old abandoned buildings tucked in the back corner that we always explored. I bet you can see where this is going...
We thought it would be a great idea to take the fireworks over to the insanely dry field and light them off. Now, I did what I thought was smart and asked my dad first if we could take them over there and of course he said no. Us being the idiots we were, we took them anyways. We ended up lighting some off and I distinctly remember seeing a bottle rocket go up and down, land in the field and "pop", but didn't think of anything of it.
Fast forward to 30 minutes or so later back at my house playing video games. My mom rushes into the room and says there is a fire truck putting a fire out in the field we were just at. My stomach dropped. The feeling of guilt made me immediately confess what we did. It didn't help that my parents knew we were over there plus the fact I asked my dad if we could bring fireworks over there.
It wouldn't have taken that long to put two and two together. I was grounded for a while, but we never got caught by the authorities or the fire department and the fire never got out of control. By the sounds of it, it barely had a chance to start, thankfully. Looking back on it now I can't help but think of how fast that fire could have easily spread.
17. House Hopping
In my senior year in high school, starting in about February, I would sneak into my (now ex) girlfriend's house every night. We hung out at her house after school and her mom usually invited me to stay for dinner. We'd all chat after dinner, watch a movie, whatever. Her mom and sister would go to bed and I pretended to leave (opening door, saying goodnight, etc.).
Then we'd go to her room. I would sleuth back into my own house in the morning to shower, change, and get ready for the before-school orchestra. This continued to happen until a couple weeks before graduation. Apparently, I'm not sneaky. My mom found out first and took my car away. It didn't matter much, because my SO had a car.
Then it became a game of her pretending to give me a ride home and us just going out for a bit and coming back. Still not sneaky enough. Her mom came home one day and nonchalantly said, "You know, maybe you should clear one of your drawers for him so he can keep some clothes here. That way he doesn't have to go home so early in the morning". So, I officially, partially moved in for the summer.
18. Animals And Ice Cream
We were at a house party near a zoo. A friend of a friend states that he worked the little train at the zoo and knew a secret way in that was foolproof. We of course did not believe him. Being sober, I ended up driving his SUV full of about seven not sober people to this random side street behind the zoo, where he proceeded to show us a spot in the chain link fence that pulled back and allowed you to enter the zoo in some back area used for trash disposal.
We walked around for a few minutes until we came upon a Dippin' Dots stand that was unlocked, and we looted gigantic sacks full of delicious ice cream.
19. Joy Ride
My friend and I decided it would be a great idea to take his dad's government car out for a spin when I was 16 and on my learner's permit. My parents were out for dinner. What could go wrong? I tried being super awesome and doing mad drifts bro...until I crashed into a light pole, a fence, and a letter box. As we started to flee the totaled car, for some reason I had a rush of sense come into my head and we returned back to the car and waited for the authorities who had been called by one of the people who lived there.
Flickr, Infrogmation of New Orleans
20. A Sack A Day
My friend and I decided to get some older 18-year-olds to buy us booze. We got us a sack of cheap vino, called Goon in Australia. We had a sack each, and I puked non-stop. I was around 15 and had never even been tipsy before. But that was just the start of my nightmare. My friends, in a panic, decided to abandon me and run for their lives. Of course. A few hours later it was dark and some people found me.
They called the hospital and I had my stomach pumped. It cost $600 for the ambulance, and I had no way of paying this. My foster parents picked me up from the hospital and eventually made me work to pay for the ambulance costs. It was just regular teenage stuff, but the stupid part of it was that I knew I shouldn’t drink so much. I did it to fit in.
My fosters had told me 100 times that if I did it they would drop me off at a local shelter for kids that were too young to be independent but sort of dropped out of the system. I went to that place the next day, and was almost left there permanently. If it weren't for the inebriated, pregnant 16-year-old who greeted us I probably would have wound up the same way and in the same place. The fosters took pity on me, and let me stay. Thank God.
21. Hide And Seek
When I was 15 I went to my ex-boyfriend’s house. We were getting frisky when we heard footsteps coming up the stairs. We knew immediately it was his mom back from work. Well, it turns out his mom told him not to have me over. I ran completely unclothed into his walk-in closet. I was hiding behind the door when his mom checked his closet looking for me. I've never felt fear like that.
Thankfully she didn't see me. After over a half-hour argument in his room, he convinced her to take him to the school to "pick up something". I waited 10 minutes after they left, then bolted out the door into a huge storm. As I'm running through the neighborhood, they come back and into full view of me. I quickly slid behind a bush and into an anthill. Thank God she didn't see me. In the end, I ran through the storm with a leg covered in ants until my friend picked me up.
22. Cliff Hanger
I was in my dad's car (an Acura Legend), and decided to see what it could do...so I drove at 95 mph down a winding mountain road (45 mph max speed limit)...with a sheer drop-off on one side. It was the riskiest thing I ever did in my life. My heart was pounding, nerves were firing, I was focused and scared. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The slightest mistake, and I would have been tossed over the edge. I’m lucky to be alive. Stupid stupid stupid.
23. Out Cold
I was 14 and was showing my ten-year-old brother how to get a headrush by hyperventilating. The next thing I remember was waking up face down in the dirt in our backyard. I'd passed out and fallen on the corner of the concrete steps to the back door. I pulled out four bottom teeth by the roots (I had braces at the time), split my upper lip in half, broke my nose, and got a concussion.
My brother said I never even put my hands out, I just literally face-planted. He told me I got up with blood streaming from my mouth and my eyes glazed over, and he thought "yeah, great idea, lemme just try that real quick". Fourteen-year-old boys can do some stupid stuff, but I really took it next level. What an idiot.
24. Alters
When I was about 14 or 15 I faked having multiple personalities. It's a miracle I still have friends from when I was 14 and 15. No one bought it, but no one confronted me about it either, so it went on for a bit. I'm 21 now, and whenever it comes up, I always admit that I was faking it for attention, and that I was a stupid kid...then I immediately change the subject…so, how's the weather?
25. Field Races
My buddy's family owned about 300 acres in the town I grew up in. Most of it was just forest, but there were a couple of large fields. All my friends and I would pool our money together, never more than $200, and drive around town looking for cheap beater cars, things that would never pass any kind of inspection, or needed a lot of work.
We would bring them back to my friend’s fields and then drive them around as if they were rally cars. No roll cages, no helmets. No safety equipment of any kind. Just regular street cars. We were particularly fond of the Chevy Celebrity and Buick Century. We would fly around the field reaching highway speeds. If we were lucky we might even get a few cars out there at the same time and have races and demolition derbies.
26. Bending The Rules
I went to a small Christian high school, and in senior year yoga pants became all the rage. The faculty held a meeting with all the girls in the school announcing a new rule that yoga pants were not allowed. Of course, the girls were outraged and they asked why. The superintendent said there were several complaints from the boys saying they were feeling distracted and "didn't want to see girls' butts".
Seriously, this was the best they could come up with. In order to protest this atrocity, I snatched my mom's yoga pants and wore them to school the next day. My mom is a petite woman and my ballsack was clearly visible through the pants. I got suspended for three days.
27. Experimentation
I had friends that were into experimenting with various substances. I was very much a "vanilla" teen, I never drank, smoked, etc. despite being surrounded by it. Well, one night at a buddy’s house they teased the idea of downing bottles of cough syrup. They went and procured a few bottles of cough medicine. Joking, I suggested that my friend D try "afternoon-quil".
Apparently, he thought that was a great idea because he mixed the nighttime and daytime syrups...and ended up in rigor mortis mode in the tub for the remainder of the night. No permanent damage to the friends was caused. D is now an airline pilot.
28. Interplanetary Visitor
I am prefacing this by saying I was delusional at the time. In seventh grade, I tried to convince everyone at school that I wasn't a human but an alien from Venus sent to earth to fulfill a mission. I also tried to convince a friend that our mutual friend was a zombie AND that the people in my head should be treated as real friends at the table. I made them places to sit and made people participate in conversations with them. Ugggghhh hello, it is I, the master of cringe.
29. Scare Tactics
I was 16, in high school. A romantic interest at the time was going through an Emo phase of her life. I cared for her deeply. One day she brought a box cutter to school. We were sitting out on the public bus stop just out in front of the high school, I took it, and I was scared for her. I told her that I would use it on myself to scare her. She didn't believe me. She should have.
It went through my left wrist, about four inches (ten cm) from my palm, like warm butter. It was Halloween. I was bleeding, profusely. So I ran toward the office, but it was so much later after school, it was closed. Any nearby teenagers who saw me bleeding out into my shirt thought it was an elaborate Halloween prank. Two of them laughed at me and shrugged it off like it was such a prank.
Moments later, a stranger walks up and helps me put pressure on the wound, and calls for an ambulance. All the while this girl is freaking out, thinking it’s the end, and asking me why I did it. I did it to scare her—and it worked. I'm stupid, really. I shouldn’t have survived. She's alive and well and has a wonderful family. I, too, am married. Funny thing, my wife's birthday is on Halloween.
30. Tightrope Walkers
When I was nine and my sister was 14 we lived a half mile from the Autobahn outside of Munich. There was a large freeway sound wall separating our neighborhood from the freeway. One day, my sister, two of our friends, and I followed the sound wall to where it got shorter and shorter and ended. By crawling up the dirt embankment we were able to climb up onto the wall.
We walked along the top of the wall, which was probably eight or so inches wide (20 cm), and about 50 feet high (15 m). If we wanted to pass by each other, one person would hang off the wall with their fingers and the other person would step over them. It was pretty cool...until our mom looked out of our third-story bedroom window and saw us.
31. House Hunters
Back in 2003 they began tearing down a 14,000+ square foot mansion on Lake Michigan. The "contemporary castle" was seven floors high and included a helicopter landing pad on the roof. All of this was perched on a 700-foot tall bluff/dune overlooking Lake Michigan.
My best friend and I decided we wanted to see the inside.
It was indeed gorgeous on our first excursion. Bits of marble columns remained supporting the massive three-floor high living room. Two stairwells serviced the home on each side along with an elevator that was obviously not working. We went back a third time and they had ripped the living room (which was on these massive concrete pillars) off of the house leaving the thin and tall remains of the rest of the house.
They had different meters measuring cracks on walls throughout the building. On the top floor, a little ledge overhung what was a balcony but was now a five-floor drop to one of the stairwells. It was sagging and clearly structurally not safe. So we both decided to walk on it and jump. We were amused with the sagging and bouncy feeling it was giving us. We laughed at the chunks of concrete falling off. We went home with some awesome pictures that I can't find. Stupid stupid stupid. That house was not safe for people to be in at that time. Whoops.
32. Up A Creek
I drank too much for the first time, lit fireworks inside my best friend's car, fell down a country embankment while escaping the carnage, and landed in a stream. I started crying because I thought I peed myself but was too blitzed to realize my pee was "cold" and about four inches deep (10 cm). Friends laughed because my butt was just in a stream. But this was just the start of my night.
I followed this by raiding a Krispy Kreme Factory (more like singing loudly at the people working in the docking bay and asking if their esteemed excellencies would bestow the blessing of donuts on us). The workers I guess were amused or just wanted us to stop singing New Wave songs at them so they gave us a couple boxes of FRESH WARM donuts.
I came home late and obviously inebriated. When I entered, I had mud on my butt, twigs in my hair, and a half-empty box of donuts held over my head. I yelled, "A GIFT FOR THE ELDER GODS", and presented them to my mother who just burst out laughing and told me to drink some water and get to bed. That night could have gone SO much worse. I didn't even get in trouble.
My mother insisted my hangover in the morning would be punishment enough. I didn't have a hangover, but I totally faked one to avoid getting grounded.
33. Secret Scan
I went to Office Depot, stuck my middle finger in the scanner, and a sales guy came up to me asking if I needed any help as a picture of my middle finger was being printed. The sales guy was not amused and threatened to tell "my parents", but I wasn't with my parents. I was with my parents' friend who was somewhat like the Dudley family from Harry Potter to me, in that they take care of me to the minimum standard, while their kids get spoiled whenever I get left with them (which was often). I begged the sales guy not to tell.
34. A Night To Remember
One time in high school a couple friends and I pulled the ol’ everyone-tell-each-others’-parents-we’re-staying-at someone-else's-house ruse while we all went to a party. The party was very lit, there were jell-o shots, and several bottles of booze, I believe a full keg on arrival, and at least 150 other people, most of whom I knew from school.
Everything was running fairly smoothly...until somebody threw up in the kitchen and an acquaintance of mine had her wallet pilfered. So the party was going great. At this point the authorities had arrived and left, and I guess that the owner who promised that we could sleep on the floor long before this moment now decided she wanted everyone out of her house.
Now we're standing in the middle of the front yard, newly homeless, still inebriated, with no idea what to do next. We can't go back to any of our parents' houses because then they'll all know we were lying. When I think about what we did, I shudder. We ask some guy where he's going and if he can take us in a certain direction. He takes us to a neighborhood none of us were familiar with and parks next to the community playground.
We kind of just hang out in the car because it's balls cold outside until he starts telling us this weird story about him and a girl. My friends and I glance over at each other with the same "what in the world" look and tell the guy he has to bring us to our friend's neighborhood. At this point, the plan is to go to his playground and try to sleep there for the night.
I previously stated it was balls cold outside, and that didn't change as it got later in the night so we quickly realized the playground was not a good idea. It's like 3:30 am at this point, and in a moment of misguided genius, I remember our church's youth group leader telling us that the portable buildings in the back of the church are always open.
Oh yeah, it is now 3:30 am on Sunday morning by the way. So we walk about three miles (4.8 km) and get to the church at around four. It's still cold inside but we're out of the wind and we have these great, comfortable couches to sleep on. We set our alarms for six so that we have enough time to get out of there before the pastors and other churchgoers start showing up.
At about 5:30 we're all suddenly wide awake. We heard a sound that sent fear running down our spines. Somebody is in the building with us, in the room right next to the one we're in, and the door between the rooms is wide open. We're all freaking out without a clue who this could be or what they would do if they found us sleeping in here.
In the other room, I can clearly see a man bringing boxes inside and setting them on the table, maybe ten feet (three meters) away from me. We all sink down into the couches, hoping this guy doesn't turn his head ever so slightly to the right and see us. He finally leaves, gets into a big truck and drives off. Further inspection of the boxes he dropped off revealed he was the Krispy Kreme Donuts delivery driver who brings donuts every Sunday.
At this point we can hear other cars pulling up and decide it's dipping time. We walk to the fountain of one of the neighborhoods across from mine to watch the sunrise and reflect on our journey. At about 7 am we decided we could walk back to our houses and just tell our parents we had to leave each other's places early. I sat at the side of my house until eight am, walked inside to my parents who were making breakfast, told them my lie, and continued on as if none of it ever happened.
35. High Times
I got crazy high at the Pink Floyd Laser Show at the Hayden Planetarium on a Friday night in NYC, and afterward fell into the subway tracks as the train was approaching the station. Thank God that Chris, my big, sane friend was there to jump down, pick me up, and throw me onto the platform as I kind of scrambled up, and then jump back up himself. It's remarkable because he was likely as messed up as I was.
36. The To-Do List
My friends and I used to hold scavenger hunts that involved doing things rather than finding things. We got the idea from Viva La Bam and thought it would be fun. The first time we did it, it was only four of us, but we had fun going through the list. Then we started inviting more and more people and by the last year we did it we had like 30 people playing.
The items on the list, which grew to about 175 things, were really stupid. There were eating challenges, like eating a raw onion, half a dozen eggs, chugging milk, eating a dollar bill. Then there were things like going to the store, buying a box of rubbers and a box of tampons and telling the cashier "It's going to be a messy night"!
Then you had to give away the tampons and make balloons from the rubbers. One of my favorite stupid ones to do was told hold an argument with a street sign for at least three minutes, bonus points if you made it to five. We also had simple ones like get a hug from five strangers and build a human pyramid, but a majority of them were really dumb.
37. Out Of Gas
I ran out of gas on a rural road at midnight in the middle of winter (-30 Celsius) without any emergency gear or appropriate winter clothing. Oh yeah...this was also before cell phones were a thing. I'm incredibly lucky (and grateful for) the people who drove by, picked me up, and took me to a gas station. Teenage stupidity can be very dangerous.
38. Spud Shorts
Getting ready for middle school one day, I saw some potatoes on our counter and figured I could utilize this for something funny. I grabbed one, but the only thing I could come up with between the bus ride and the first hour was to shove it down my shorts and wing it. I made it about halfway to class when it dropped out from my boxers and rolled across the walkway. Confused laughter, horrified looks, and me only saying "how'd that get in there”!?
39. Baked
I was a clueless college freshman and really wanted to make friends. I eventually found a group that I would hang around regularly and we had several classes together. So on this fateful day, I was hanging out with my friends before class and one of the guys pulled out a large bag of special brownies. So at this point in my life, I had never even drank, let alone taken any substances (really sheltered upbringing).
Well this dude handed me a large brownie and I didn't want to be lame so I fell into peer pressure and ate the whole thing. Well we get to class, mind you this is a lecture-style class with over 100 students, and I settle in for the lecture. About 20 minutes into the lecture the hallucinations begin. I vividly remember the roof of the building being ripped off and I began to fly through the sky...I know, weird.
I also was convinced the professor was the devil and she wanted to eat me. I had to be escorted out of class because I began to flip out. To this day I haven't taken edibles since...
40. When The Opportunity Strikes…
My parents used to own a small store that sold mattresses. So, I'd lay on one of the beds set up in a corner that was kind of hidden in the store and...you know...wax the dolphin. Unfortunately, my parents also had one of those mirrors so that you can see around corners that pointed into the main part of the store. So I'm sure a lot of customers saw a 14-year-old-kid going at it in the back of a store through an angled mirror. Because when my dad saw it he nearly hit the roof.
41. On The Run
Me and my friend saw a patrol helicopter nearby trying to find a suspect with its spotlight. My friend had a crazy idea of trying to catch their attention and just book it for fun. I agreed and he ended going onto the street and waving his hands back and forth. Then when they were shining the light on him he booked it toward me and we both started running for about two blocks to where we lived.
All that time they were shouting something on the megaphone but I didn't even pay attention because my heart was pounding like crazy. When I got home, they were still shining their spotlight on my window but only for about a minute. I think they knew we were just messing around because no authorities showed up afterward. I guess we got lucky. Sick experience though.
42. Balls Of Fire
I used to take a tennis ball, drill a hole in it, and fill it with lighter fluid. We'd then soak the outside in lighter fluid, light it on fire, and launch it down the street (we lived on a hill). Most of the time it was just cool to watch the ball bounce and a little fire and burning rubber would shoot out. The last time I did it a patrol car was driving up the street and the ball bounced on the hood, the roof, and then continued on down the road. This was the mid-80s so all he did was take our names and our parents’ phone numbers and let us go with a warning.
43. Locked Up
This was when I was in seventh grade. I went to a really small private school and my parents a lot of times helped out around the school on weekends. So I was often there in an almost empty school with nothing to do really. I, for some reason, had a very different locker than most of the other kids in the school. Mine was a really short locker, but very wide.
I had always wondered if I could fit inside of it, and I figured this was a good time to do it with nobody around to see me finally solve this stupid mystery. So I get inside and I'm kind of scrunched in there. Well, the stupid door shuts on me. I'm trying to use my fingers to open the latch from the inside, but no dice.
So I've locked myself inside my own locker until probably 20 minutes later, my Dad and another adult family friend come along and I start pounding on the door. They laugh. And laugh. And laugh. And laugh. You know what I'll just let you guys know when they're done laughing. But it's been 14 years, so I'm not sure that's gonna be any time soon.
44. Exploded
I built a tennis ball cannon out of soup cans that I held together with a special kind of tape that adhered to itself, but not to the cans. I ignited the thing outside my bedroom window on the second floor. With a massive BOOM, it blew completely apart in my hand, cans flying every which way. I improved my bonding scheme in future models.
45. Night Terror
I owned a pair of night vision goggles. They were the toy Splinter Cell ones. I came home inebriated, broke, and craving McDonald's. I knew my dad's credit card would be in his jeans on the floor at the base of his bed. Pfft, easy. I put on the night vision goggles and crawled into his room under the cover of darkness. While successfully obtaining the card, I hear him make a sudden move.
I slowly but surely stand up to see him with his eyes wide open, looking into the blackness. That's when I realized I'd made a horrible mistake. He jumped to his feet and charged me. I screamed like a wimp, "No dad, it's your son"! I then remembered that one of the selling features of the night vision goggles was a red LED ring that lit up when they were turned on. He had watched this assassin halo rise from the base of his bed and was ready to throw down. When he turned the light on, I just backed away in silence because I was too ashamed to explain that his idiot 18-year-old son was using a toy to pilfer his money for McDonald's.
46. Bleached Blonde
I wanted to dye my hair blonde. Hearing the term “bleaching” your hair, I did the only logical thing and dumped out a couple gallons of bleach into a five gallon bucket and proceeded to dunk my head in it. I only got the top and back of my head, but it got unbearable to keep my head in the bucket very long, my eyes stung and I couldn't breathe well.
So I would go in for a few seconds at a time. I kept looking in the mirror to see if my hair was blonde yet, and since it wasn't, I went back in for more. My scalp started to burn like crazy, but I pushed through (no pain no gain, right?). Eventually, I had to give up. It did in fact dye my hair, but I have very dark hair, and I did not know how hard it is to go from that to pure blonde.
So I ended up with crazy orange carrot top hair. But that wasn't the horrifying part. My scalp turned into one giant scab, and for several months after that, my head would flake off some scabs and start bleeding. I have no idea how my hair survived such an ordeal, but it somehow managed to heal and looks pretty normal now. Always go to a professional, people.
47. Secret Admirer
When I was 17 I had a crush on the guy who lived across the hall (he was in his twenties). I knew I was too young for him so I never let on that I had a crush. I just simply said hello when I would run into him, maybe converse about nothing in particular for a minute and that was about it. Well, I always thought he was a pretty cool guy and genuinely nice.
So I decided I would leave him a secret admirer note. This way I could tell him how awesome I thought he was without giving away my identity. So I go through with it, I write a note stating some nice things about him and sign it "your secret admirer". I tape it to his apartment door right as I'm heading off to school. When I get back from school I see a note on his door that says "to my admirer".
I open up the note, and my blood runs cold. It said, "I know exactly who you are, the authorities have been contacted". I freak out, stick the note back on his door and quickly get into the apartment I lived in with my aunt. My aunt bumps into him in the hallway a little later when she gets home from work and they proceed to have a conversation. Once they are done talking she comes in and tells me what was discussed.
Turns out he has a crazy ex that he had to put a restraining order against in the past. My handwriting I guess looked a lot like his ex's handwriting, which led him to think that she figured out where he lived. So he did actually call the authorities to inform them that she violated the restraining order. I didn't have the guts to fess up. I went to bed that night wondering if his ex ended up behind bars that night because of me (stupid teen girl at the time). I never wrote another secret admirer note after that.
48. Loosen Things Up
I put laxatives in the school coffee pot (it was a small private school). I just happened to buy the most powerful OTC laxative available, and I used a lot. My favorite teacher drank a bit, had a severe allergic reaction, and had to be hospitalized. I got suspended for two weeks and had to see a psychologist to make sure I was "mentally fit to return to school". It wasn't one of my better ideas.
49. Faking It
When I was 19, I worked at a summer camp as a sort of supervisor for a group of counselors. There was an event coming up and I had wanted to take a day off in order to attend. My boss insisted that it wasn't possible for me to take the day off, so I decided to call in sick because it rubbed me the wrong way. Now, knowing that I would need a note from my physician, I actually went to the doctor the following day.
My normal doctor was not in, and a nurse practitioner was filling in. She did a pretty thorough exam, poking and prodding my stomach and asking if it hurt, etc. I probably reacted in a couple of areas trying to sell my illness. At this point, she recommends that I visit the ER because she believes I may have appendicitis…this means a better doctor's note, right? I had no clue what I was in for.
I'm in the ER, and my entire family is there at this point. They're having me drink the barium milkshakes to prepare for imaging to see if I need to have an appendectomy. I have to drink four of these things over an hour. I'm on my last one and the ER doctor comes in and tells me he's going to have the surgeon come in to chat. Knowing that they're going to take these pictures and everything will be fine, I'm not concerned.
Well, the surgeon comes in after I've finished the last drink, and he says that he can see I'm in some pain (still selling it), to which I suggest that we're going to take some pictures to see if it's legit (which will turn up negative). He then explains that he doesn't need the pictures and we should just go to surgery now. Thirteen years later I'm appendix free, and I just told my family two or three years ago when I first shared this with Reddit.
50. House Party
I was house-sitting for a friend of my parents while they were gone for a week. Friday night came around...party time. I let my friend drive the house owners’ car to go grab some things. He ended up flipping the car in a ditch. Then, the night somehow got worse. I tried to cancel the party to deal with that but around 50-60 people showed up anyway. The house got trashed, personal items got taken and the hot tub got ruined. Oh and the car was a write-off. Ended up losing my virginity that night so it wasn't all terrible.
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