People Share The Dangerous Things They Did Without Parental Supervision
When I was a kid, my friends and I would play a game where one person had to jump on the trampoline for a minute while the rest of us shot at them with airsoft pellets from a deck above it and everyone had a turn on the trampoline. I can't believe none of us lost an eye.
Kids really do love to do dangerous things, often with no regard for their own well-being; these people shared the unsafe activities they partook in as kids, and I'm surprised they're alive to tell the tale. Hopefully, your kids aren't doing the same things.
This Is Literally A Death Trap
"Tree riding. Climb a tree and have your friends cut it down. We would have contests to see who would climb the highest. I won more than once. I cannot fathom how I nor anyone else was not seriously hurt, nevermind killed."
I Always Was Tempted To Try This...
"My friend and I used to ride plastic laundry baskets down the steep wooden staircase of his Victorian home, but don't worry, the 90-degree turn before the last few steps caused the wall to stop us."
The Classic Tuck And Roll
"For a little while, it was a middle school fad to throw yourself off buses as they were slowing down and do a roll on the sidewalk. I smacked my midsection on a telephone pole and had bruises for weeks."
Hay—Don't Do That!
"We used to dig tunnels through the hay that they stored in the barn that would be like 10 meters high in places. The tunnels would regularly collapse and we'd just shrug it off and dig another."
One Misstep And It Would Have Been R.I.P. Timmy
"My siblings and I used to play on my grandma's house roof. It was a really old house in need of some serious repairs. The roof slates just fell off on their own sometimes."
Chemicals Are So Dangerous
"We used to play with chemicals in my neighbor's garage—we'd combine all different kinds of chemicals we could find (I would assume lawn care and car chemicals) in her garage into a hole in the cement floor. At least we were smart or lucky enough to keep the garage door open."
Ma'am, That Is Breaking And Entering!
"Back in the old days when folks didn't lock doors, my idiot self used to sneak into my neighbors' houses and wander about while they slept. Then I’d get scared and leave. Very dangerous as a six-year-old girl."
That's Not Toxic Or Dangerous At All!
"I grew up on an air force base and back behind the school was an old pond with suspicious rainbow ripples that was surrounded by 50-gallon barrels. We called it the Devil's Claw and spent the entire summer there every year.
"I looked it up recently and yep, it's a superfund site because it was the jet fuel dump."
More Like Lawn Dart Russian Roulette
"We used to play with lawn darts, except no one was throwing them at the rings like you're supposed to. Instead, we tossed them straight up in the sky and scattered to avoid getting hit."
A Cute Touch Of Pyromania
"I loved to play with fire. I almost burned down the house when I was like 8; I set a fake plant on fire and ran away. My mom was cooking a room over and put the flames out. When I was in middle school, I burned a hole in the carpet in my room and covered it up with a small pink carpet. Parents never found out until I moved out."
Multiple Generations Of Messing Around
"Growing up in the '90s, we basically lived at our local park, and there was a foundation still there from the '60s of an old toilet block which had been blown up... by my dad when he was a kid."
Just Your Casual Landmine On The Way To School
"I grew up in Kigali, Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, there were still land mines all over the place. As kids, we used to play soccer on the street while walking 1.5 km to school and one day the ball fell in the bush. I went for it, but little did I know the stone-like thing under the ball was a notorious landmine—I got the ball and asked an older kid what it was. Ten minutes later, the entire neighborhood was on site talking about how I'd just cheated death."
Trampolines In General Were So Dangerous
"I used to rollerblade off the roof and onto the trampoline. It hurts just to think about it now. I'm still shocked I never got seriously hurt while doing it."
They Just Gave Kids Mercury Back In The Day
"In the '50s and '60s, you could get chemistry sets complete with a vial of mercury and other dangerous chemicals. Man, it was fun playing with that mercury and mixing various chemicals to see what would happen.
"Next, we'll talk about the wood-burning set and the toy that came with a cauldron to melt metal and pour it into molds to make soldiers and whatnot. All while mom was upstairs fixing dinner."
Really Thought We Were Phineas And Ferb Back In The Day
"I built a 'rollercoaster' track down a steep hill when I was 10. The trial run nearly killed me."
The number of poorly designed homemade ramps and other inventions I made and used has me seriously questioning how I survived my childhood.
I Mean, It's Actually A Pretty Effective Way To Scare Bears
"My cousins and I, from the time we were toddlers, were just sent out into the forest in the morning with nothing but whistles to 'scare the bears.' One time I chased a bear."
Nothing Like A Cute Little Explosion!
"I used to fill balloons with my dad's oxygen/acetylene torch from work and throw them in bonfires. The explosions were so thunderous we'd have cops riding up and down the block. I can remember doing it one time and flaming debris burning a sand dollar-sized hole in my starter jacket."
We Really Were Out Here Doing Our Own Stunts
"Evel Kneivel'ing my BMX bike off jumps into roads while a friend was supposed to be watching for cars but mostly stood there picking his nose looking at his untied shoelace."
Why Didn't A Teacher Stop This?
"The Great Rock Wars. In grade school, we played this game during recess where we just whipped pebbles at each other. Hard."
I mean, I'm not surprised that kids tried this, but why didn't someone try to stop it?
Kids Just Want To See Things Burn
"My greatest discovery at around 12 years old was finding out brake fluid and chlorine for the pool combust when mixed. Soon, my friends and I were doing all kinds of crazy stuff with the mixture. The best was driving a pipe into the ground a few feet long, and putting the chlorine and brake fluid in there, and watching the dragon fire shoot out the pipe. It's not an immediate reaction, kind of a slow burn till it bursts into a furious hellfire."
Stranger Danger!
"I used to talk to other random kids on MySpace and go to meet with them in real life. We took trains and busses without our parents' knowledge or approval. It could have ended badly, but everyone was cool and normal."
This Sounds Like Something Out Of A Video Game
"Every winter, the gravel road I lived on froze over and we would convince the older kid down the street to drag our sled behind his motorbike. The sled would hit rocks and stopped cold on more than one occasion, flinging kids into the rear tire/hot muffler of said motorbike."
Big Mission Impossible Energy
"One time, we tied my cousin to a bookcase nailed to the wall so he could rappel out the second-story window. Our mom and aunt pulled into the driveway as we were lowering him out the window just above it."
This Is The First Step To Tetanus Poisoning
"I used to play around in the houses that were being built in my neighborhood and dumpster dive in their big dumpsters full of rusty nails and other hazardous items when I was 7. Fun times."
Imagine This Dad's Shock At Seeing This
"My brother and I once tried to see who could breathe the exhaust fumes from our father's truck the longest. Our dad stopped us before we could find out though."
What A Fun Game!
"When I was a kid in Africa, some killer bees decided to build a hive inside of a street lamp in our neighborhood. All the neighborhood kids would gather around and throw rocks at the street lamp. When you heard the first major bzzzzzz, you took off running like a bat out of hell."
We Really Were Just Faceplanting On Gravel
"As fun as it really was, I am still surprised how more of us didn't get seriously injured on old school playground equipment. I'm 29, but I'm old enough to remember when playgrounds were filled with gravel, not wood chips or shredded rubber. It's a good thing small kids are shockingly resilient because I know I face planted on those rocks more times than I can count."
So Quicksand Was A Real Threat And Not Just Something In Movies
"My friend and I got stuck in some quicksand that was the result of the local dam overflowing. Instead of getting out right away, we played in it like pigs in a mudbath, probably for about an hour. Then it actually took us a bunch of tries when we wanted to get out.
"We got home, covered from head to toe in mud and my friend's mom scolded us because apparently there were pockets of air underneath the quicksand, so people every year were sucked down into them and died. Apparently, they had to have divers come to look for the bodies and many were never found."
Straight Concussion Fodder
"Back when my family lived in Panama, my brother and I would play 'coconut bowling.'
"It was a game we made up where one of us stood on a hill behind our house and rolled coconuts down the hill, while the other stood at the bottom trying to catch them before they rolled into the gutter. However, these coconuts were pretty hefty, and sometimes they'd bounce up in the air a few feet due to their irregular shape and from hitting rocks/bumps in the hill, and could have potentially caused us some serious injury if they ever hit us in the head."
How Was This Fun?
"I used to play a game called 'jump off the stairs.' I would drag some pillows from my room towards the stairs, and jump from the highest stair I could onto the pillows—sometimes I would miss."
