Kids and Ditches
Looking through old pictures of mine that I found in a box under my bed, got me to thinking. As children, we all said and did stupid things to pass the time -- mostly out-doorsie things, like hula-hooping and pitching stones at each other and playing chicken fight on the monkey bars. Surely, some of the more dangerous activities must have scared the living wits out of your parents; like that time you went bike-riding by that slope your mom told you time and time again not to go by... Or took a lead pipe to a bee's nest... Tied firecrackers to your favorite stuffed animal, tangled him by rope like a piñata from a tree branch, and lit him on fire... Anyways. So name a fond childhood memory of yours where you can recall doing something so outrageously stupid, you either came out of it with scars and bruises, or the emotional scarring of your LIFE after your pissed parents got to you. For the sake of interest, it could also be something you did that was just really dumb and resulted in some kind of injury or embarrassment as well, not even necessarily related to childhood. It'll be fuuuun~! (also, I want threads besides the minor glyph thread to have some activity >_> )

I don't really have too many stories of this sort because I was a goody-two-shoes kid and rarely sought the outrageous >.> The stupidest childhood moment of mine would have to be the day during the winter my brother locked me out of the house and on the first floor all of the windows were just glass so I couldn't necessarily just open a window and climb in the house (yay for whoever constructed that house choosing windows for the first floor that suit no purpose except to just look through them -_-). Anyways after an hour of me pleading and my brother just laughing at me saying I can't get in, I decided to punch through the front door window and unlocked the door myself and then punched my brother. When my parents got home of course they were not pleased with my actions and that was the longest I remember myself being grounded. Also my right hand still has faint scars from when it got cut up from the glass. My wanting to get into the house seemed to outweigh a coherent thought process and there was probably a better solution, but I was at 100/100 rage ._.

On one rainy late autumn evening, three of my friends and I were in a church parking lot waiting for a flag football practice. As it got darker and started to pour even more, we were doing circles in my little bitty Dodge Neon. My hands slipped off the wheel and I managed to get my Neon stuck on a bush on a raised sidewalk. After a little bit of jimmy-rigging with it, we decided it was too rainy to stay to play football. So we figured we'd grab something to eat and head home. As we pulled out of the parking lot, my front right tire hit a mud patch and we slide into a ditch about a foot deeper than my car was tall. It took us like 20 minutes to get out of the car, since the doors were jammed by the ditch and mud buildup. Three of the four of us are pretty big guys, so it was entertaining to see us climb out of the windows and fall out into the rain and mud. The embarrassing part came when I had to call the hospital and bother my aunt during her pre-birth checkup trying to find my mom somewhere in the hospital. I still get crap for calling her room instead of the lobby (like I could know that number). Ultimately we got the car towed out of the ditch. The tow truck guy joked that with 3 pretty big guys we could've pulled it out ourselves and avoided the bill. Still I get made fun of for driving into the ditch and not being able to get it out on my own. Not so much scarring, but embarrassment for me.

Hmmmmmm my memory is poor so most of my childhood I don't recall. There is a couple of things I do recall of that nature though, one I won't mention though. In no particular order I was fairly young, can't remember how so but I was a toddler probably. There was a fairly large park where I lived at the time (this was when my parents were together so I was probably 5 or 6, perhaps 4) It had a big old wooden playset and the ground around was pebbles etc save one large rock. Anywho I was crossing the bridge that was there and some older kids were on each side when I got to middle. I don't recall what they looked like, so they had me trapped there and had the bridge swinging. I made the poor choice of eventually fighting when I got scared. So wooooooosh off the bridge I flew into a rock. I don't recall much of it except the head throbbing. My parents weren't around it was my crazy irresponsible grandmother (my other grandparents are actually normal and don't lack morality) though so I was always told it was a dream or some imagining but I am fairly certain it was some form of covering her ass to say I imagined it. Another which was more confusing was when I was left alone in the apartment I was in with my mother, since my parents were seperated at the time my father of course wasn't around. I was like 7 or 8 and she stepped out, can't remember reason I think she was out with a friend, a common thing. Anyway it was fairly lateish by my standards at the time, like 7. The fire alarm went and so I went out and locked the apartment door and was going to the elevator since I was told to evacuate in case of fire alarm. She came out the elevator as I was going in and did I ever get in some shit, why I am not entirely sure but she was worried something were to happen to me if I was to leave during the drill. I recall getting yelled at a lot with no real idea as to why, it kept me on my toes lol. Ummmm a more fond memory is my grandparents (my actual grandparents that I like lol) had this big german shepherd called Tina. They originally got her like a year before I was born so largely we grew up together so to speak. Since she was a larger then normal german shepherd I recall riding around on her back when I was exceptionally young and she was kind of like the ranged arm of my grandparents. Since while they always supervised me they never had to chase me (granted my grandmother would find that difficult, speedy she is and was not lol) they used to call to her and she would essentially act like a sheep dog and corral me so to speak. Anyway from what I remember there was a time when I ran into some snakes in their garden down the back, not really big or anything but could have given you some nasty bites for a kid. So anyway at like a 1000000000 miles per hour I came up the garden riding this german shepherd she lost her footing (well with me bouncing up and down probably not surprising) and crashhhhhh through the door to the sun room bowling over my grandfather and a table and spilling his tea all over himself with the cup landing on the dogs head like an obscure hat.

Thinking back, the time that gave my parents the biggest heart attack took place when I was around 5 or 6 years old. I was standing in my front yard playing with my dog when my mom came outside to tell me to get ready to go in the car to go somewhere. After waiting for like 2 minutes for her to come back outside I got bored and decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. This might be a good time to mention that I lived in the Garden district of New Orleans, the heart of the city, like 5 miles away from a local ghetto and could hear occasional gun fire at night. But going back to the story, as I started to walk down the block away from my house I thought hey, my friend lives just down the corner I think, I'm gonna go pay him a visit. Unfortunately I didn't know the area as well as I thought I did and found myself lost before I knew it. As I got more and more nervous walking past houses unfamiliar to me I knocked on the first door that looked like my friends house, but before someone came to the door to respond I ran away being so nervous not knowing where I was. After another 5 or 10 minutes a police car comes strolling by me and the officer in the car tells me that my mom is looking for me and escorted me just a few blocks away to my house. My mom comes running towards me once I am within eyesight of her and picks me up with tears in her eyes yelling at me and hugging me. Apparently she called 911 thinking I was abducted and thinking back to that event now, I don't blame her at all, a single little white boy walking down the streets in the heart of New Orleans sticks out like a sore thumb. I think I was pretty lucky something didn't happen then.

Glad to see a few responses. :D Anyway, here's a few of my childhood delinquencies. I once jumped off the top of the stairs with an open umbrella when I was five, thinking I would float safely to the bottom. It didn't quite work out the way I had hoped. I used to jump off the swings a lot when I was little. That was until I jumped off once doing a backflip, overturned, landed on my back and hit the back of my head on the ground. I got a concussion, and had to get a lot of stitches. My parents wouldn't let me sleep that night. I thought if I fell asleep I would die. I once fell down the side of the highway into a ditch. I apparently did a quadruple backflip, and ended up with my left hand impaled on a branch (in retrospect I am very lucky I didn't fall another few feet to the left). I think I was...nine or so. Not only did I get to suffer the pain of that injury, when my dad and mum found out where I had been playing, I got the worst beating of my life that I can remember to go with it. Actually, my left hand has been the victim of a number of other accidents as well. I have a good amount of scars on it. I have also: Put it through a glass door. Stuck it into the cieling fan while trying to put on a shirt. Ironed it by accident. And for some reason, a hypodermic needle scar I got in it when I was twelve has still not gone away.

I don't know how to put this but while I feel bad about your hand being brutalized as you have apparently done to it I admit there is this little voice in my head (this ones for black humor, he lives beside childish humor and is across the street from mischief, evil and satanic, and this guy named George, nice fellow gives to charity and invites people over on easter) that seems to find it hilarious.

Growing up in the suburbs of Denver, CO, most fireworks were not only legal but redily availiable. My friends and I, none of us older than 7 or 8, would go to the fireworks stand and buy as many blackcats and bottle rockets as we could. Then we would go to the park and have "wars". This consisted of throwing lit firecrackers and aiming lit bottle rockets at each other. It was a miricle no one lost an eye. At the time we were just having fun. Now that I look back it was extremely stupid. That was during the summer. During the winter time all of the snowplows would dump the collected snow in a huge grassy plains type area across the road from my house. It must have been 100 arces easy (though I was a kid at the time so it was probably much smaller) and the snowmounds that were made were massive. They were as big as houses. We would get shovels and other tools and climb to the top. Once there we would dig all kinds of tunnels and other crap. Then we would have really awesome snowball fights. But, one thing lead to another and one of the tunnels collapsed partially trapping my friend Louie. We were able to get him out without him getting too hurt but he still had to go to the hospital. After that we didnt so much make intricate tunnels but we still played in the snow.

Silly Dirtbikes!
So I didn't grow up riding dirtbikes. In fact, I've only ridden a dirtbike twice in my life that I can recall. I was 28 and attending a family Memorial Day picnic in a rural area. Well, hell! They had a dirtbike track in their backyard so it looked fun! I got on the dirtbike and rode slowly, barely knowing how to shift or apply the brakes. I was doing good as I headed up a banked turn (much like on a NASCAR track). Then my right hand decided to accelerate while the rest of my mind and body stood in awe, but did not react. As I continued over the top of the embankment, I realized I was going too fast to stay on the track. My silly right hand, still accelerating, had no intention of grabbing the brake and my left hand didn't want to hit the clutch and my right foot refused to apply the brake. As I accelerated over the edge of embankment, I quickly realized that I was on a damage mitigation mission and I attempted to ride it out. Of course I selected the area to exit the turn that had a three-foot drop followed by a steep, but short incline. Kind of like Excite Bike! The mound of earth stood firm against the moving object known as "the bike and I". Thus, I was thrown over the handle bars, my shins scraping the handlebars on their way over. I did a somersault in the air and landed squarely on my left shoulder blade (glad it wasn't my head). I weighed about 215lbs at the time and the weight of my body and legs came crashing down as well, bending me in half. I was stunned and I felt a searing pain in my shoulder. I stood up and I got light headed and very pale. My cousin drove his truck out to pick me up on the tailgate. When I got back to the house, my drunk uncle said, "Ah, you'll be okay!" and attempted to hug me. I pushed him away knowing it would be the most painful hug of my life. I stepped into the bathroom and pulled my shirt back only to see my clavical protruding from my shoulder, but it didn't tear my skin. My sternum hurt even more due to the folding of my body. My aunt (nurse) took a peek at my shoulder and said, "You need to go to the hospital! You broke your shoulder!". After several hours in the hospital, some excellent intraveneous pain killer and some x-rays, I was told I tore all three tendons off of my clavical, allowing it to stick up in a most unattractive way. However, my sternum, despite it's terrific ability to provide a high level of pain, was fine. Subsequently, I was told the surgery to fix these tears is difficult if not impossible. To this day, my clavical pokes out of my shoulder and I can no longer bench press or do push-ups, two of my favorite exercises. My shins have matching scars. The moral of the story is, don't do stupid shit.

One time, when I was... oh... 5 or 6 perhaps? maybe younger, my cousin had brought her dog over for my parents to babysit while she was out of town or some bullshit. It got out in the garage one day, and my parents were calling to it, since we were about to leave somewhere. Well, I was like "Hey, I'll just go get and bring it in" (it was a chow). So, I ran out at it. It's a dog. It wanted to play. So I chased it around the car. Well, I was very focused on the dog and not the environment. I plowed into the metal side of a work bench my dad head, right into the left edge of my left eyebrow. I came to in a van (my neighbours) as she was looking at my injury (it was one of those HUGE vans). I recall something about a bone. Next thing I knew, I was getting butterfly stitches. I still have the scar, but it is very hard to see. One time at the zoo, my dad also picked me up and held over the bars to the lion cage. Luckily, there was a moat. So I wasn't devoured. At my old house, it backed into a forest. One day while playing, a snake wandered into my play area. My dad claimed it was poisonous. My black cat at the time immediatly intervened, and assaulted the snake and ripped its head off. She suffered a bite and we had to take her to the vet. ANother fun story. Once, when I was boy scouts, I had broken my arm. I was on this camp out/community thing at a local military base. It had been raining heavily that week. Alone, I was attempting to walk to the main event from the camp site. I like to save time, mind you, and I saw a patch of grass (roots, ground is stable, yeah?) in some mud and figured I could cut across and save time. Well, halfway through, my left leg sinks to my knee in mud. I move my leg out, but my shoe comes off. So I was like, hey, I need that. Using my free hand, my left hand, I reached down to get it. It was fairly stuck. So, I braced my cast against the ground so I could get leverage. Well, I was pushing my weight down on my right leg, which proceeded to sink too. After forcing my shoe free, I feel from the lack of movement from my right leg. The mud has gotten all mixed up with more water now, and I've struggled down to my waist. So as I sit in the mud, contemplating my doom stuck in the mud or possibly suffocating in it, I see a fellow troop member. I call out for him to help, but he is unable to hear me (Thunderstorm was starting). Thankfully, 10 minutes later, a soldier drove by on an ATV and saw me and managed to pull me through. Another time in scouts, I stepped on a hill that was in actuality a fire ant kill. My leg was stuck in it as thousands of fire ants swarmed my leg. And, once as a child of about 4, I was playing on the back of the semi truck my dad had brought home from out of town to return to work the next day. There was this grease thing on the back, and my shoe got stuck. So I wriggled free, leaving a shoe and handprint and grease on myself, I left. My dad later confronted me and I told him it was not me, when I still had the evidence on me. Fun times.

Re: Silly Dirtbikes
JB, I gave up weightlifting /cry. Started jogging and I do situps.