People Confess The Most Messed Up Things They Did As Children
Kids do the darndest things, but sometimes the things that kids do are downright alarming—and we’re not just talking about throwing tantrums in public. Some of these kids were playing with literal fire. From blowing things up to burning things down, these people divulged the most disturbing things they did as children.
1. Socket-Boy
I loved Spider-Man and decided I wanted to have superhero powers too, so I took a metal hanger, twisted it, and stuck it in an electric socket. The zap I got made me drop it right away, but several days later, I thought, "Maybe I just need to hold on longer". So, I tried it again. My mom caught me the second time and seemed very, very upset at the prospect of having a superhero for a son.
I didn’t try it again.
2. Double Fail
This occurred during a high school science class, when I was 13. It was so long ago that I can’t remember what it was, but I think it was a red powder. I guess we were doing experiments, and as part of the safety speech, we were told that ingesting the powder would make us sick. So, I thought it would be a genius idea to take some.
You see, I had a test in the afternoon that I hadn’t studied for, and I thought this would get me out of it. When lunchtime came around, I wanted to make sure it would work in time, so I hid, took the powder, and then ate my lunch. It wasn’t long before I was throwing up. It was just too bad for me that my illness was all over and done with by the time lunch was over.
The nurse sent me back to class to the test I didn’t miss, and I felt crummy for the rest of the day. I’m still annoyed it didn’t work properly!
3. A Hot Mess
This happened during summer vacation early in the morning. I have an older brother and two younger sisters. My mom used to work nights, and my father worked morning shifts, so at least one parent would be home at all times. My mom would get home around 6:00 AM every day, and then she would sit with my father until he would leave, which was around 6:30 AM.
She would then go to bed and sleep until three in the afternoon. They had this schedule until around five years ago, so it was most of my childhood and teenage life. Well, one of those days after my dad left and my mom, brother, and sisters were asleep, I came across some duct tape, incense sticks, a lighter, and a few dirty laundry items.
Well, little idiot me thought it would be a good idea to tape the dirty clothes to the wall outside my mother's bedroom while she slept, light the incense, tape the lit incense to the laundry items, and let them sit. Maybe I thought I was doing laundry…I don’t remember. But I’d left them there for about 10 minutes. Then I heard the screaming. It was my younger sister, who was about three at the time.
The clothes had caught fire. She touched one of them and burned her hand pretty badly, which dropped a lit shirt onto the carpet and set the entire hallway on fire. We all made it out okay, but I basically almost offed my whole family and myself, except for my dad. All because I thought I was doing laundry.
4. Hide-And-Go-Seek: Expert Level
I once watched my family break down and think I got taken by some random creep. I remember being in one of those hollow tubes that connect playground sections and deciding it was a good spot for a nap, but I was so amped to be at the park that I couldn’t fall asleep. There were holes in the sides of the tube, like tiny windows. At some point, I realized my parents were looking for me and calling my name.
I don’t remember why but I decided it’d be a worthy experiment to just sit back and watch my family, then the neighbors, and then the neighborhood utterly panic, thinking I’d been kidnapped. I just laid there, listening and sometimes watching through the side holes.
5. A Small Eggsplosion
I tried making fireworks out of toy plastic Easter eggs and WD-40. It blew up in my face and burned my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes on one side of my face. I didn’t get hurt, but I didn’t notice I was missing any hair until I left the woods. When I got home, my mom started screaming, "What the heck!" when she saw me.
6. Should’ve Tried A Croak-Pot
I microwaved a dead frog in an attempt to cremate it when I was around eight. It exploded. Unsurprisingly, I went to college to study mortuary science/funeral services, which I did not complete.
7. Just Keep Your Hands In Your Pockets
I stapled my own finger at home to see what would happen. Well, it hurt, and I had to pull it out again. Sometime later, I put my finger into one of those car lighters while I was waiting for my mother to come back from buying groceries. I really burned my finger, and when she came back, she asked why it smelled so burnt in there.
8. The Biter Bit
When I was five years old in preschool, I was sitting next to a girl I didn’t like during a movie. The lights were off, and we were all huddled around. I don’t know how I even thought of this, but I bit myself in the arm and screamed, saying she bit me. The other little girl got put in timeout, and I thought I was in the clear until the teacher’s assistant told the teacher what actually happened.
When my mom picked me up that afternoon, my teacher told her what I did, and they legitimately thought I was a psychopath.
9. Poison Control
I made my own ant poison by mixing together everything I could find. I used every kind of cleaning liquid imaginable, plus toothpaste, soap, petrol, and sugar. It burned my skin a bit, and I had a bad cough for a while after that too. It worked really freaking well, though: It wiped out anything that touched it. Ants just kind of melted, and weeds turned white and dried out in seconds as if I’d poured liquid nitrogen on them.
However, I freaked out after I noticed a neighbor’s cat sniffing around near a spot where I had just eradicated all life. I realized at that moment that poison is poison, and I got scared about accidentally exterminating all the cats in the world. So, I poured the remainder of the poison on a corner of the garden and tried to dig it in.
Luckily, I didn’t pour it down the drain because I don’t know what that would have done. We lived there for about five more years, and I don’t recall anything ever growing in that corner of the garden again.
10. ET: Extra Terrifying
Welp. I caught a frog and put it in my pocket. My dad took me next door to meet the new neighbors, and instead of talking like a normal child, I talked like ET at four years old and asked the neighbor in my creepy alien voice, "Do you wanna see my frawwwwg"? They all laughed at me because I was a cute little curly-haired weirdo and said, "Sure!"
So I pulled this dead freaking frog out of the depths of my pocket and proceeded to pet it menacingly and with a lot of pressure. My dad was so embarrassed, and we never spoke to the neighbors again. He has also told EVERY boyfriend I have ever had that story.
11. Urine Trouble
I don’t know if this is really disturbing, but when we were like seven or eight, my friends and I used to have this fortress that we built in these massive bushes up against the front of my house. It was pretty cool because it was like a maze in there. It all fell apart when we decided it was okay to have a pee corner in the fortress since we couldn’t be bothered to go into the house.
This lasted about a week before my mom figured it out and yelled at us to stop. How’d she figure it out? We were peeing directly below my parents’ bedroom window, and they were trying to figure out where the constant stench of pee was coming from.
12. He Cut To The Chase
When I was in fourth grade, my crush jokingly threw my binder on the ground, which caused it to open up and release all my papers into the wind. I vowed to her that I would get my revenge. The next day, I brought a small steak knife to school. I had it in my backpack and somewhat forgot about it until after school when my crush, her younger sister, and myself were on the playground.
I showed them both the blade and had them feel it, so they knew it was real, and then I told them I was going to end their lives with it. I chased them around the playground, which was very busy with other kids and parents and all, although I had absolutely no intention of hurting anyone in any way. Her sister told her dad, who told the school, who told my parents…and yeah.
I never ever did anything like that again, and I’m still not sure to this day why I seriously thought that was a good idea. It’s a memory I cringe at when it pops up in my head.
13. RIP Kermit
I caught a frog, put it in a Styrofoam container, and left it to sit out in the front of the house in the sun all day…Yes, on purpose. Then, after it had perished, I pulled out a butterfly knife. You know the ones that fold into the handle, and you can do cool trick-like things opening them up? Yup, I had one, thanks to a naive grandmother when I was around eight or nine.
So, anyway, I took that out front, dumped the deceased frog out, and started just to cut it open and dismember it. I don’t know...that might be the most disturbing thing I’ve done as a kid. It’s the first thing that pops up in my head that I can remember.
14. Some Actions Have Devastating Consequences
From fifth grade to eighth grade, I was a pyromaniac. I lit stuff on fire all the God dang time. There was a grocery store that recently closed down near my house, and I started exploring it. Well, I had the brilliant idea of collecting a bunch of flammable stuff and making a giant pile, then lighting it on fire. The roof caught on fire, and I panicked.
I made sure to seem as calm as possible as I walked home nervous as heck. I didn't turn on the news, and I didn't do ANYTHING that might remotely show interest in the fire, as I thought it might draw attention to me. I purposefully avoided anything about it, and eventually, we moved, and I just kind of forgot about it. I thought the story was over—but it came back to haunt me.
Eight years later, I met a girl in another state. It turned out we grew up in the same area and went to many of the same places, and we started dating. As I got to know her, we were talking about the schools our friends and family attended. Through conversation, she told me about her brother’s school, and she said it was named after a fireman who had passed.
Just to continue the conversation, I nonchalantly asked how he passed. She then told me that an abandoned store caught fire, and this guy passed putting it out. My heart started pounding at this point. I asked if she remembered the location of the store. She found the news story for me, and HOLY FREAKING HECK, IT WAS THE ONE I BURNED DOWN.
My heart started beating like a jackhammer. I’d taken a life. I almost started crying. I told her the truth, and she said that it was in the past, and she'd never tell anyone.
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15. About As Accurate As WebMD
Whenever my siblings had small coughs or something along those lines, I somehow always managed to convince them they were either gonna die or were very sick. I'm not sure how I didn’t get in trouble for this, but I kinda think they were just silently expecting to die for a time. Anyway, they didn’t trust me all that much when it came to medical stuff for a while, and I still feel guilty about it all these years afterward.
16. Feeling Smothered
I was a young child, no more than eight perhaps, and I had this weird obsession with being suffocated, which I got from a movie I saw. So, to feel the suffocation, I used to lie on a bed, place a pillow on my face, and tell my six-year-old sister to sit on the pillow until I passed out. I was weird.
17. A Lousy Undertaking
I once got lice as a kid, and after two hair treatments, the devils still weren’t gone. Child me didn’t want to have to go through the hair treatment again, so I just sat in bed meticulously going through my hair, pulling louse after louse out one by one and squishing them as well as the eggs on my roots until there were none left.
It worked. But heck, it was weird and gross.
18. Fur Realsies
When my mom’s friend came over, I would sit in his lap and stroke his hairy arms like a cat. There was nothing inappropriate about it (I was seven). My dad has a disorder that made all his hair fall out, so seeing hairy arms was fascinating to me. I look back at it and cringe, though, especially since I still know this person in my 20s.
19. Hammer Time
I evidently had a rare tantrum when I was four and beat the snot out of a kid my mom was babysitting with a wooden toy hammer. I think about my poor mother having to explain to that kid's mother how I wasn't really a psychopath when her kid looked like he had just been in a British bar brawl.
20. To Be Fair, Carats Are Nutritious
I took one of my grandmother's diamond bracelets, took the diamonds out, and then ate one every night before bed. I'm sure it was just costume jewelry because she never asked about it, but I thought that maybe it would make me pretty like some magic pill. It didn't work at all.
21. For Science!
My sister and I would poop in jars and store them around the house. We wanted to be scientists, and we called them our specimens. Mom found a jar one day; it was really old, and she stuck her hand in it to smell. Then she let out a loud horrific scream once she solved the mystery puzzle.
22. Taking A Shot
I learned a severely important lesson about firearm safety at about the age of five with a nerf "blaster". It was a magazine-fed rifle-style weapon. We had been instructed not to shoot the nerf darts at any of us who weren’t actively participating in a nerf battle willingly, but I was trying to get my brother to play along with some game I had made up.
I figured I could coerce him by pointing a nerf weapon at him, but I didn’t want to actually shoot him because I saw that as rude, so I took the magazine out. He wouldn’t listen to me, so being a petty kid, I tried to spook him further by starting to pull the trigger. Well, the blaster suddenly launched a dart that hit him square in the forehead. He started crying.
Lesson learned: treat every projectile weapon or toy as if it is loaded and hot, even if you think it’s not.
23. The Cut-Throat Kid
Having recently gone through some significant malice when I was like 11 or 12, I wanted to end the lives of the people who hurt me. So, I secretly decided I wanted to take multiple lives when I grew up so I’d have experience in how to do it well. I'd heard of the Macdonald triad by then, and even though I DID burn things as a small child, I’d never wet the bed or executed any small animals at that point in my life.
I couldn't exactly make myself wet the bed in my sleep, but I realized I COULD start executing small animals. So, one day I took a baby bird from its nest and held a razor blade to its throat. Then I realized that even if I went through with it, I'd only be doing it for performative reasons; if I was going to become homicidal, then executing it wouldn't actually make any difference.
So, I just put the baby bird back and went on about my day.
24. Holy Fire
We’d been making documents look older in school by rubbing tea bags on them and singeing the edges. It was fun. Walking home, I decided to make the posters on the church notice board look older as well. Apparently, old, sun-bleached paper and an old, thin wooden cabinet burn very fast and very well.
25. Not A Peace Symbol
My dad taught night classes for a while, and for reasons I have either forgotten or was not privy to, I would spend his class time sitting in the back of the room with one of those portable, briefcase-sized black and white TVs. One night during his class, there was a news report about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, of which I was a huge fan.
I found out many years later that the news report was about a controversy centered around a TMNT puzzle that featured graffiti. One of the graffiti pieces was, as I later learned, a symbol used by the German army during WWII. I was way too young to know what it was or what it represented, just for the record. However, the report said that it was used as an Asian symbol for peace or something like that, which I liked.
I had already been drawing the intro for the TMNT arcade game on the chalkboard in the back of the classroom. Welp, seeing this report, I figure I should add the Turtles-approved peace symbol to my magnificent artwork. So, I did. It must’ve been a foot high. My dad immediately put the class on a 10-minute break and erased my hard work. He was furious, obviously, but he didn’t say why.
I found out years later what the issue was when he brought it up during an argument with my mom, and I could finally understand what was going on. My parents never explained to me what I did wrong. Obviously, I eventually learned the significance of that symbol and how wrong it was to draw it, but all I knew back then was that it seemed like a cool design, and it was Turtle-approved.
26. BRB, Barfing Now
I wasn't quite a child; I was a teenager with bad acne. I was extremely self-conscious about it, and I would stand in front of the mirror every night and pop the whiteheads. One night, I saw one that wasn't quite prime (it was deep and still had a fair amount of skin over it), but I endured the pain and popped it anyway.
Afterward, I noticed a small bit of white still inside, so I dug at it some more. I couldn't quite get it out, so I grabbed a blade and started picking at it. I then got the tweezers and kept picking at it, digging into my skin. Eventually, more puss came out, but under the blood, I could see even more white. I kept picking at it, digging deeper, and started pulling it out with the tweezers.
It was subcutaneous fat.
27. The Frog Croaked
Well, when I was about five or six, my family and I went to the county fair, and they had a frog race. All the kids brought frogs and basically herded them across the pavilion. My frog didn’t do so well, so to my parent's horror, I stomped on it in front of the whole community. I was definitely not a good sport, but I promise I’m better now.
28. Not The Brightest Idea
I got dragged to a shoe store with my mom when I was four. I was bored, so I attempted to fix a showcase light that had gone out. I took a lightbulb from another showcase that wasn't plugged in. It was one of those mini ones that were really bright. It worked. But after a few minutes, it started to smoke and catch fire. The bulb melted the plastic around it, dripping it on the shoes below.
The showcase went up in flames, then the store, and then a good portion of the mall. I did like the renovation; they ended up putting a candy store in place of the shoe store.
29. Their Visit Took A Sharp Turn
When I was seven or eight, we stayed at my dad's friend’s house for the weekend, and he had a son my age. I was in a douchebag hooligan phase in school, and I loved pocket knives. Anyway, this family had a nice swinging chair in the living room, which I’d enjoyed the first evening. Well, the next morning, only the son and I were up early, and he was in the swinging chair.
I wanted to have a turn, but he wouldn't let me because I’d had it the evening before. So, I took out my pocket knife and threatened to cut off his fingers if he wouldn't let me sit in the chair. Of course, the son told his dad, who then got really mad at my dad. They never spoke to each other again, and I got my butt whooped for a solid hour after we got home.
Fun times.
30. This Could Have Ended So Much Worse
This happened to my five-year-old son. We had a small five-step staircase leading up to the front door. We also had a two-meter long rope with a couple of knots tied into it for him to use to climb up the sides of the stairs. One day we heard him crying outside, and we found him lying on the ground holding his hands across his neck.
He told us he tried to jump from the stairs with the rope tied to his neck because he wanted to see if he could hang and dangle there. He had no notion of what being hanged or strangled was.
31. Sweet Revenge
So, this happened when I was about three or four years old. We went to a pharmacy, and I asked my mom if she would buy me candy, but she said, "NO!" We later left the pharmacy in our car and stopped at a traffic light intersection, where she wanted to turn right. But when the light turned green and the car started to move, I did something incredibly stupid.
Halfway through the turn, I jumped out of the moving car. Luckily someone was standing at that corner and grabbed me; otherwise, I would've gotten run over. If I had been, I bet my mom would've regretted not buying me candy.
32. No Fair Shakes
I shook a baby bird to its ultimate demise because it wouldn't eat when I tried to feed it. Being from an abusive home, I used to get shaken a lot; it's what happened when I refused to eat. Instead, the poor thing lost its life, and I stuffed its body in a jewelry box until maggots ate it. I still feel incredibly guilty over it, and I've been gentle with every bird I've saved since.
33. Bugging Out
I don’t remember this, but apparently, I used to be "friends" with insects, and I would tear off their wings so they couldn’t leave me. If they were bad (most likely just walking away), they’d lose their legs too. Thinking about it now, it’s disturbing in two ways: First, of course, there’s me being a psychotic, socially manipulative monster.
Second, I am TERRIFIED of insects nowadays. If one even gets close, I shudder and jerk back. The funny thing about it all is that I’m a larger guy, and even thinking about myself as a child touching insects makes me shiver…
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34. Just Grabbing Some Grub
I would do anything for a dare. Because we were children, the stuff never got too wild, but I ate A LOT of small animals. I mean everything from bugs to lizards and even a sea slug. Surprisingly, I’m still alive, and a lot of them weren’t too bad. I still enjoy the taste of crickets, but never again will I eat a cicada.
The only time I didn’t take the dare was when someone told me to eat a funnel-web spider (I live in Australia). It’s the most dangerous spider in the world, and I will not eat it. I still love spiders, though.
35. This One’s Hard To Swallow
I used to go "hunting" by myself in the surrounding forest around my house. By hunting, I mean trying to catch lizards and small birds with my bare hands. One day I actually caught a small bird, but instead of letting it go, I twisted its head until it stopped moving. Then I managed to open it and "eat" some of the bird.
Afterward, I tossed the body into the woods, washed my hands and face in a creek, and then went home like nothing happened.
36. Playing Dirty
As a kid, I got sick of this one guy tormenting me, so I decided to mess him up. I don't know what got into me, but what I did was horrifying. While he was on a swing, I walked up behind him, pushed him off, kicked him in the nuts, and then bashed his head into the wood chips a few times. After that, I pushed him over to face me so I could land some gut punches. I then finished by trying to stab him in the leg with one of the wood chips.
37. Disconcerting Dares
A few times, when I’d sleep over at my best friend's house, we would end up playing truth or dare. It would end up with one of us on top of the other one grinding on each other. This was early in middle school. Other people later got involved in this type of truth or dare game, too—one of them being my best friend's cousin...Yeah.
Although it was mostly just jumping on each other, things went a bit further with my friend and me, like a lot of touching. It was weird and very strange. It confused me, too, because I wasn't into her. The game ended when she asked if we could kiss, and I responded that "we should go to bed now". I tried bringing these times up to her, but she "doesn't remember".
I get it.
38. Some Kids Are Holy Terrors
My friend and I were between five and six at the time. Our parents were the kind of Christians that didn't miss a chance to make us think humans are meant to rule over beasts and that animals—aside from dogs—meant nothing. Cut to my friend catapulting a frog using a massive seesaw and me trying to catch it with the sharp end of a pitchfork.
39. Can’t Say I Blame Them
When I was five, I knew the next-door neighbors were out when I heard their phone ringing. So, I thought I'd do the "right thing" and break into their home to answer. I told the woman on the other end of the line that no one was home and hung up. Afterward, I started randomly going through their stuff, eating lollies and other things I'd found.
I came across a lighter and began fooling around with it, lighting things on fire and then blowing them out. But when I did it to a nylon jacket, it went up in flames straight away. Terrified, I just bolted! I’m baffled how the house didn't burn down. The neighbors, of course, freaked out, sold their house, and moved away.
They told my parents that they didn't want to live next door to a disturbed kid.
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40. Well, Everyone Needs A Hobby…
For some reason, one winter, all of these specific birds kept dying. I have no idea why to this day, but I'd find multiple deceased birds in my travels around the neighborhood and to and from school. The disturbing part was that I started collecting them. I think I was up to 20-something birds before spring hit, and my parents made me get rid of them because they’d started to thaw out.
41. That Doesn’t Seem Cricket
I dissected grasshoppers while they were still alive to try to figure out how they worked, basically. I also took live ones and pinned them to the fence, which attracted wasps. I’d watch as one wasp would come to cut the bottom off of the live grasshopper while the other would grab the top half and fly away. I never did find where they took them, though.
42. A Guilty Conscience
I wanted a pet bird, so when I found some baby birds in a nest, I took one. I later realized I couldn’t take care of it, and believing the whole once you touch a bird, the mom won’t take it back thing, I crushed it with rocks. It’s a memory I repress to this day. I also did a similar thing to an adult magpie; it seemed injured already, so I hit it with a stick so I could catch it because, again, I wanted to take it home.
I didn’t come from a troubled home. I don’t know where this came from, and these are shameful memories for me now.
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43. Lizzie Borden, Is That You?
I found a hatchet in our basement near the camping gear. I picked it up and immediately thought, "I could slay my entire family tonight, and there’s nothing they could do about it". I was 10. I wasn’t mad at anyone. I had an amazing childhood: I was happy, well-adjusted, popular, a good student, and not a psycho at all.
Yet this psychological thought just popped into my head, and I had no emotional reaction to it. I honestly thought about it for a second. Sheesh.
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44. Sneaker Sneaking
When I was in elementary school, we used to have roller rink parties every month. The school hosted them, but other patrons of the skating rink were there as well. Anyway, one time my friend and I got bored of skating. We thought it would be funny to go to the lockers (which weren’t locked) and switch up all of the shoes.
We were crying laughing while pairing a little boy's shoe with a cowboy boot, a high heel with a man's leather shoe, etc. At the end of the night, we watched the chaos ensue. People actually started crying because they couldn’t find their shoes. I felt really bad about that.
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45. The Wiz Kid
I've been told that as a child, if I needed to pee, I'd pull my junk out and then lead myself by my junk to the nearest toilet. Obviously, it didn't bother me, but apparently, it was pretty disturbing for the family, friends, and total strangers in restaurants who got to witness it.
46. Too Many Fingers In The Till
As a kid working my first job, I took thousands from the till over a couple of months by processing phony refunds, so the float would always balance at the end of the night. I was called in one day by the store's detective and questioned under suspicion of theft. I was sure I was busted and going to take a hard fall—except the first set of suspect transactions occurred under my name during a week-long period that I was out sick after having my wisdom teeth removed.
It turned out my supervisor was stealing as much or more than I was, and she was using my clerk number so that I would get blamed. All suspicious refunds were automatically her fault, and I stopped skimming after that. I worked there both full and part-time for another eight years.
47. Burning Down The House
When I was young and my small town was expanding, there were a lot of housing developments getting built around me. My best friend and I would sneak into the construction areas after hours to play in the houses being built. One time, we played with matches and some aerosol cans inside one of the houses and accidentally started a small fire.
We tried to put it out but couldn't, so we decided to run as fast as possible. We didn't go back that night but found out later that the house and the one next to it got completely destroyed. We were never caught, and we both agreed never to tell anyone. Even though no one was hurt, I still feel a little bad about it, even today.
48. Ballbuster
Some kids from my street and the next street over once got into a rock-throwing fight. I nailed this fat, mean kid nicknamed Chip right in the nuts, and he went down howling and crying, so everyone scattered. It turned out that I’d busted his ball, and he had to have it removed. He didn't know it was me because there were so many kids chucking rocks...but I know it was me.
49. Cut And Run
When I was about six years old, I was at a potluck party at a school building with my family. During these potlucks, the kids normally played together in a room while the adults socialized. I was by the door and noticed a baby girl walking toward the same door. Being a punk kid who didn't like babies, I closed it as she reached her hand toward the door.
The door closed and ripped off her index finger. I immediately ran away, and no one saw a thing. I later heard her finger got reattached, but still…
50. It Was A Long A Shot
When I was about 12 years old, my cousin and I were trying to see how many times we could pump the pump-action BB gun. We ended up with about a hundred pumps before it became too much to get any more out of it. Then we thought, "Hey, you know how we could test it? Firing at a moving car!" It sounded like a grand idea to my little brain at the time.
I crawled under a car in our yard and waited for another car to pass by. Then I pulled the trigger. It made the loudest sound, just like a real shot blowing out their car windows. Then the tires screeched to a stop. I ran like heck to the back of the house and pretended I’d been back there using the bathroom the whole time.
This guy came up to us freaked out because we had literally blown out both of his rear windows while he was doing 72 km (45 mph) down the street. He believed our story because we were so young. We buried the weapon after that.
51. They Couldn’t Hold The Fort
I burnt down a on the hill behind our house. It didn't belong to us, but we built a fort out of it. It was actually pretty sweet for a couple of 10-year-olds. One day we started a fire in the stove, a rusted old stove, and it quickly got out of hand. It grew into a giant blaze and half the hill caught on fire. We bolted.
The next day, the headline in the paper read, "Some say it was a shed, some say a fort, but whatever it was, it is no more". An investigation said that a grass fire caused it, so we never got in trouble, but our parents knew better.
52. No Disillusions
I’m still not sure to this day why I seriously thought this was a good idea. I watched a magician on TV performing a "don't try this at home" trick. I saw it, knew it was a risky thing, and then I did the thing anyway. I did the thing HARD. I convinced another kid to get in a box, and then I deeply jabbed the box with knitting needles. Luckily, I didn't hit the kid. It worked! That's when I decided to take this madness to the next level.
I got a big knife, and that kid and I took the show next door to the neighbors. We were in business! Fortunately, when I jabbed the blade up to the hilt from multiple sides of the box, I missed the kid again. The neighbors gave us both a piece of fruit as payment, and there were no negative consequences. I realized later that day what could have happened and never did it again.
The neighbors should have stopped it when the kid got in the box, and I got out the blade. Some people are frozen by things like that and don't realize they should be leaping into action until after the moment has passed; that what's happening isn't a wholesome magic trick, and the two kids performing with the real blade have absolutely no freaking idea what they're doing.
That was my first and only magic trick. Why didn't I realize it was obviously a bad idea? I was a kid, and that means a certain level of insanity—a mismatch between what we think and how it is and will likely be.
53. Shanks A Lot, Buddy
Around fifth grade, I was on the bus with my friend, who I sat with on the ride home every single day. We were doing our homework with graphite pencils. She said something—I don't even remember if it was annoying or angering, it could've been totally innocuous. My reaction was absolutely chilling. I don’t know if I was upset or if I was just bored and thought it'd be funny somehow, but I intentionally took my pencil and shanked her in the face with it.
It missed her eye by maybe two centimeters maximum. Then, because the bus had reached my stop, I just got up and left. I told everyone that it had been an accident. I had been holding my pencil up, and the bus had hit a bump, and it just happened, and I'd been so panicked and scared and regretful that I'd just fled the scene without saying anything.
I told so many people this that I even started to believe it myself. Even now, over 13 years later, my first thought is still that the bus hit a bump; it was an accident. But it wasn't.
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