The daft things we did as kids ...

boogieman

munckee said:

We used to make rocket launchers from drainpipes and fireworks. Seems really stupid now I think about it : )

A lot of the stuff we did as kids was stupid and/or dangerous when you think about it. We had easy access to potentially lethal stuff of course, plus I don’t remember us being watched over or supervised an awful lot. I wonder what the accidental death rate for kids was back then as compared to now? 

Neill

Kittyfrisk said:

@Neill   'Making a drainpipe "sing" with some lighted newspaper.' Hard to replicate with plastic downpipes, but with cast iron the sound was glorious 
Making blow darts out of pins and a bit of knitting wool bound with cotton & fired out of Bic biro tubes. Would pierce a school blazer and stung like hell.
My matchstick gun used an old fashioned dolly clothes peg, a pop bottle rubber seal & a single hair grip.
Making catapults (catties or gatties) with 1/4" square elastic (laccy). Genuinely dangerous...
Putting 6" nails on the local railway line to flatten them, then making them into knives or spear tips (no, not for 'hood turf war stuff, just for chucking about).
Happy days 

That's it - you needed two old pop bottle "O" rings and with two hair grips you could make a trigger.

Never tried the pins and biro tube blowpipe but I am going to now...

Back in those days every kid I knew carried a penknife and a catapult - real Dennis the Menace style, but for sport, not as weapons.  Some lads had air guns and air rifles - remember the old BSA Sportsman?  But no-one ever used one in anger.  Of course in those days even the sight of a policeman would scare the crap out of you. 

You would think we would all have ended up in casualty  on a daily basis but in all those years I don't remember anyone getting seriously injured.  Cuts and bruises were routine but you didn't even "roar" (what we called crying in Yorkshire) when you got hurt. 

As you say, happy days.  We had real freedom back then, I don't envy youngsters today for all their wonderful toys.  

Philly_Q

The bit with the pins freaked me out.  Ugh.

But yes, kids have that sense of wonder and curiosity, it's a shame we lose so much of it.

I sometimes think that we don't see things like grasshoppers or slow worms any more.  But presumably they're there, it's just that we're not crawling around looking for them.

DrCornelius

One of our little gang brought his dads huge golf umbrella out with him one day as he believed he could float down from a height a la Mary Poppins.  He got on top of a garage and jumped off.... 2 broken legs 

munckee

boogieman said:

munckee said:

We used to make rocket launchers from drainpipes and fireworks. Seems really stupid now I think about it : )

A lot of the stuff we did as kids was stupid and/or dangerous when you think about it. We had easy access to potentially lethal stuff of course, plus I don’t remember us being watched over or supervised an awful lot. I wonder what the accidental death rate for kids was back then as compared to now? 

42 dead 96 injured I think last time we did it.

okay not really.

munckee

DrCornelius said:

One of our little gang brought his dads huge golf umbrella out with him one day as he believed he could float down from a height a la Mary Poppins.  He got on top of a garage and jumped off.... 2 broken legs 

I lolled that maybe a wow would have been slightly more appropriate!

Neill

DrCornelius said:

One of our little gang brought his dads huge golf umbrella out with him one day as he believed he could float down from a height a la Mary Poppins.  He got on top of a garage and jumped off.... 2 broken legs 

His own, or those he landed on..?

DrCornelius

munckee said:

DrCornelius said:

One of our little gang brought his dads huge golf umbrella out with him one day as he believed he could float down from a height a la Mary Poppins.  He got on top of a garage and jumped off.... 2 broken legs 

I lolled that maybe a wow would have been slightly more appropriate!

I dont think he even screamed. He was a strange kid - he stripped off naked on the bus once for a bet and sat there starkers until it was his stop.  I still remember all of us on the top deck cheering out of the windows as we watched him get off the bus and walk calmly down the street with his clothes in his bag slung over his shoulder.  He got expelled shortly after

boogieman

Philly_Q said:

The bit with the pins freaked me out.  Ugh.

But yes, kids have that sense of wonder and curiosity, it's a shame we lose so much of it.

I sometimes think that we don't see things like grasshoppers or slow worms any more.  But presumably they're there, it's just that we're not crawling around looking for them.

Yeah they’re still there, especially grasshoppers. I think it’s just a case of kids not looking, a lot are just happier watching tv or looking at an iPad. (Some just don’t have access to outside space of course.) My 3 year old grandson is obsessed with animals and nature, he’ll quite happily spend ages in the garden looking for bugs or watching birds but he’s pretty unusual I’d say. 

One thing I haven’t seen for ages though is a hedgehog. We used to get them snuffling round the garden all the time, my mum would put bread and milk or cat food out for them. Can’t remember the last time I saw or heard one. 

Kittyfrisk

@Neill   Not dissimilar to this, but we didn't have shoelaces to waste :-D
https://www.instructables.com/Very-Simple-Blow-Dart/
Carried a knife all my life since I was in the scouts, but a swiss army type that is a 'legal carry' in the UK. Wouldn't leave home without it, unless I was going for a flight or it would rightly be confiscated.

McToot

Living abroad, me and a bunch of mates used to get the little bangers (Black Cats), put them in the largest, freshest dog turds we could find and then light them. The one who legged it last won. Well, they won in one respect anyway. 

Luckily I lived by the sea (caribbean, so nice and warm), so it was easy to bathe in the glory of victory and wash the chod off at the same time. 

Once we managed to disassemble one of those airbomb repeaters into the constituent bangers that would normally explode about 50 feet in the air. We then bored a hole about a foot into a huge termite's nest in a tree. Muggins here lit the bomb, rammed it into the hole and then turned to jump off the wall and escape. Problem was we'd miscalculated the fuse and it went off in less than 2 seconds, leaving my ears ringing and me picking dazed but annoyed termites and bits of nest out of my hair and clothes for hours.   

chillidoggy

".......jumpers for goalposts..............."

munckee

McToot said:

Living abroad, me and a bunch of mates used to get the little bangers (Black Cats), put them in the largest, freshest dog turds we could find and then light them. The one who legged it last won. Well, they won in one respect anyway. 

Luckily I lived by the sea (caribbean, so nice and warm), so it was easy to bathe in the glory of victory and wash the chod off at the same time. 

Once we managed to disassemble one of those airbomb repeaters into the constituent bangers that would normally explode about 50 feet in the air. We then bored a hole about a foot into a huge termite's nest in a tree. Muggins here lit the bomb, rammed it into the hole and then turned to jump off the wall and escape. Problem was we'd miscalculated the fuse and it went off in less than 2 seconds, leaving my ears ringing and me picking dazed but annoyed termites and bits of nest out of my hair and clothes for hours.   

A group of chums and I started a fire in an industrial steel bin (it was mostly empty!) to see if an empty snow spray cannister would go bang.  We all stood around the bin for a minute and nothing happened so we got bored and as we wandered away there was a massive bang and the bin was virtually destroyed.  Had we been still there we would have not faired so well!

Philly_Q

munckee said:

A group of chums and I started a fire in an industrial steel bin (it was mostly empty!) to see if an empty snow spray cannister would go bang.  We all stood around the bin for a minute and nothing happened so we got bored and as we wandered away there was a massive bang and the bin was virtually destroyed.  Had we been still there we would have not faired so well!

We had a massive open common behind our house when we were kids and we often used to have bonfires, burning rubbish, or just for the hell of it.  Once someone accidentally (it really was accidentally) put a deodorant can in the bonfire - there was a loud bang and it came shooting out like a rocket.  The cylindrical can had popped open along a seam and the sides had spread out like wings, with very sharp edges.  Very lucky it didn't hit anyone.

Now that I'm thinking about it, there were big patches of gorse bushes on that common and we would tunnel through them and make dens.  A couple of times people set light to the gorse and there were some pretty large fires - almost like mini versions of the bush fires you see on the news.  It was a little scary, but never endangered any houses, thankfully.

Springywheel

Did nobody else have Stone fights? Basically we’d divide into two camps and throw stones at each other. The “Golden Eagles” on one side and “The Outdoor Law” on the other. You could bail out any time...losers were the side with nobody left standing. Quite surprising that nobody was killed really. We made all kinds of devices for launching the stones; catapults, sling shots etc. i remember documenting the battles in a diary, as though they were important historical events - “The Battle of Alfred Street, 1996”.

We used to pretend to be movie stuntmen...riding our bikes down the alley way and then jumping off onto bare concrete to avoid an “explosion” or falling off a “cliff edge”.

We’d shit in bags and launch them into people’s back yards. “Piss bombs” with freezer bags were more dramatic as you’d hear them explode. 

guitars4you

chillidoggy said:

".......jumpers for goalposts..............."

now you are talking

Teyeplayer

axisus said:

I remember that if we found a box with some matches we would do that thing where you flick one off the box and it lights and flies through the air

Burnt the next door neighbours trees down on mum’s 40th doing this. They weren't maintained at all well and were the height of the house, plus she’d been moaning about them blocking out the sun in our garden for several years. A stray gust of wind and the match blew over the fence lighting the needles that made perfect kindling at the end of dry spell. Right telling off from the fire service, hiding from mum and unhappy neighbours; some appreciation for fulfilling her birthday wishes. 

rustneversleeps

THIS IS A TRUE STORY.I GUY I KNOW WAS ALWAYS CALLED “bullet “so I asked why.He said when they were kids  they played on derelict building sites.So they found  a old chest of draws with some bullets.So they threw bricks at seeing if they were real or not.When he got home he is sitting in the front room.He had some in his pocket so he threw  them on the log fire as he didn’t have much luck before.His mum got shot in leg and his sister in the arm !. He got carted off to Borstal
for 18 months.

rustneversleeps

chillidoggy said:

".......jumpers for goalposts..............."

We used to nick the jumpers .

gordiji

I found a live 12 bore cartridge at the local gun club i so took it home . We used to mess with the empty cartidges so i knew i had to empty this of the shot and plastic inner bit. I then put it in the vice in the garage at home and hit it with a hammer. Instant deafness and thank the lord my folks were shopping. God knows what the neighbours thought.