When I think of all the ridiculous shenanigans I got up to as a child, I consider it a legitimate miracle that I’m not at least missing some limbs. I wasn’t even a particularly rebellious or reckless kid, but the shit my buddies and I pulled when we were off in the suburban wilderness of Southern California is the stuff of 1980s adventure movies.
I’m at a point in my life now where having a son of my own is both socially acceptable and personally terrifying. It’s not a fear of parenting in general, but the intimate knowledge of what boys are capable of given enough unsupervised time and space. If you remember a time when playgrounds were practically designed to break bones and picking gravel out of your knees was a weekly occurrence, these stories will surely stir up some fond memories. Feel free to share stories of your own “shit from my youth that should’ve killed me” in the comments below.
Getting This Close to Sending a Potato into Orbit
My friends and I worked on advancing the technology of potato cannons. We started with the typical aquanet/BBQ lighter combo and that did all right for a while. By the time we were in our early teens, though, we had taken it to a whole new level. I won’t get into all the schematics, but it involved spark plugs and oxygen-propane mixtures. We had to freeze the potatoes ahead of time just to keep them in one piece. They flew so far we had to fit them with orange streamers just so we could find them afterward. Our record was something around 300 yards. We eventually called an end to the potato space race when we accidentally blew one up and realized we were essentially building nine-foot plastic pipe bombs.
Turning Storm Drains into Playgrounds
I had my best childhood adventures in the network of storm drain tunnels under our city. They were essentially open to whoever was bold enough to go tromping into them, and aside from a few random pitfalls, they were dry for most of the year. Playing inside them was the realization of every Ninja Turtle’s fantasy a kid could come up with and one of my many childhood proclivities that carried on into adulthood. Abandoned buildings were always a good time but nothing beat taping a flashlight to our handlebars and riding around for miles underneath the city streets. Sometimes we’d have to climb ladders that seemed impossibly tall just to peek out of a hole in a storm drain to figure out where we were.
Getting Nailed by Rock Salt Shotguns and Barbed Wire Fences
I spent my childhood on a bicycle, and when it came to dirt roads there was no such thing as a dead end. Rusty barbed wire left snags in most of my shirts and “NO TRESPASSING” signs may as well have been welcome mats. While this wasn’t dangerous in and of itself, it was fairly well known among the kids at my school that at least one local rancher had a habit of shooting trespassers with rock salt. Fortunately, I never found out firsthand how true that rumor may have been.
Playing with Dangerous Wildlife
Filed under “Thank God we never ran into that” are mountain lions. I had always known they were around but until the day we stumbled upon a half eaten deer carcass surrounded by giant paw prints, it never really occurred to me just how low on the food chain I really was. Rattlesnakes, scorpions, and tarantulas all eventually wound up in my curious hands. That damn mountain lion den scared the hell out of me, though.
Riding Much Faster than Any Kid or Adult Ever Should
Probably the single most dangerous thing an average kid will encounter before the age of 16 is gravity. It makes rolling things go fast, it makes illegal tree houses potentially deadly, and it turns every steep hill into a contest of one sort or another. When I was a teenager I tried my hand at downhill mountain biking. During one race at Mammoth Mountain, I hit 52 mph and nearly gave my mother a heart attack. All things considered, though, it was not nearly as dangerous as other summertime activities.
NEVER Turning Down a Double-Dog Dare
We used trashcan lids as sleds and abandoned tractor tires turned into horror story carnival rides on steep hills. We swung off cliffs on rope swings just for fun, and just about every open patch of land eventually sprouted an unofficial BMX track where we could all do our best Cru impressions. When we inevitably wound up with a broken bone or stitch-worthy flesh wound, there was no first-aid kit standing by, and no cellphone to call mom to pick us up. We hopped our broken, bleeding asses on our bikes and rode ourselves home.
Cliff Diving into Poo Pools
Probably the greatest of all gravity-related exploits we took part in was jumping off the top of a waterfall in a neighboring town. It poured off a 40-foot cliff into what we assumed was a rock-free pool below. Of course we couldn’t tell for sure because the water was covered in mats of green algae. I found out years later that the algae cover was due to excessively high levels of nitrogen in the water, leached from the sewage that was being pumped into the stream from surrounding neighborhoods. There was a treatment plant about a half-mile downstream that somehow none of us knew about until the advent of satellite imagery on the Internet.
“Keep Away from Open Flame” Sounded Like a Challenge
I don’t remember how old I was when I figured this out, but every kid eventually learns that warning labels are essentially instructions if looked at with the right/wrong frame of mind. Seeing a good explosion is almost universally attractive and I don’t care how safe you think your home is, a clever kid will find a way to blow something up. Most people are satisfied with watching Michael Bay movies, but my friends and I found every possible way to bring the movies to life.
Playing with Minor Explosives
Growing up within driving distance of Mexico and Nevada meant that M-80s and other minor explosives were relatively common to come by. Even more common, though, was dry ice. The bangs and booms you can make with a plastic bottle and some solidified CO2 are enough to scare the neighbors a few houses down in any direction. After a few tries in my friend’s swimming pool, we realized there was a time and place for stuff like this and Saturday afternoon in the backyard was not it.
If you’ve read this far and you’re not entirely horrified, you know as well as I do that the phrase, “Don’t try this at home” is as trite as a politician apologizing for being caught in a lie. I also don’t expect a lot of 12-year-olds to be reading this. I’m not saying it’s good for kids to get hurt, and certainly the kids who did get a load of Farmer John’s rock salt would feel differently about it than me. I will say, though, that I think it’s better to grow up with some scars and good stories than with a debilitating fear of the unknown.
