Stupid things you did as a child

So, so many stupid things

properly stupid and dangerous was when i decided to boil up some water on the bonfire - in a glass lemonade bottle with a metal screwtop firmly in place - my poor dad nearly had a fit - (to be fair he probably shouldnt have taught us to be total pyros!)

i once decided having touched a stinging nettle and it not stinging me that i was 'immune' so boasting to my friends of my superior skin grabbed a big handful of them with both hands

in the same vein - the electric fence round the cattle nearby

when my mum's friend came to stay my sister and i used to make her little girl drink potions made out of water, shampoo, soap, talc, perfume etc - that came flooding back when they came to my wedding ?

my sis and i also used to go round the nearby hedges and collect the 'jewels' we used to find - which were (i now realise) cat repellent gel things that our poor neighbour must have spent a fortune replacing constantly ?

Raw bacon (especially smoked) IS yummy!

I'm now seeing why you might be worrying about your daughter ?

Love the thread

1) petal perfume - yes me too. And the disappointment the next day when all you had was brown stinky water!

2) pretending to take drugs - i.e. sucking on loads of icing sugar

3) pretending to smoke, we would make fake cigarettes filled with flour that you 'puffed' on and a little cloud of 'smoke' would come out the end.

4) forgetting to puff the flour out of the fake cigarettes (see 3) and sucking it into your mouth instead - yuck!

5) going 'Sneaking', which involved dressing all in black and climbing into people's back gardens to see how close you dared to get to the windows. It stopped the day we got chased by a very large dog across a golf course!!!

5 I think the weirdest one was Bee Funerals. Where if we found a dying bee or butterfly we would pick lots of flowers and put the flowers and the bee in a shoe box and pray that it would get better. When it eventually died, we would bury it and have a funeral and cry inconsolably for the rest of the day! (Yes I think that was very weird!)

Just had a little wee zeb - you may have a point ?

Remembered another, we used to make 'nests' on the garden for the birds out of grass cuttings. Couldn't understand why the birds wouldn't use them ?

Bee funerals ?

Well i WAS having a down day but these have made me smile and laugh out loud hehe.

petal perfume- yes

taking imaginary dogs for walks - yes

goerge's marvolous medicine - yes

something i did that was really stupid and dangerous, i only remembered it a few years back. my mum had tablets for her kidneys and they where capsules. we (my brother and i) used to open them and take all the poder out into a dish then cram loads in some of them and leave some empty and put them all back into the pot!

we used to live near a rail way line and when ever a train went past we would shout "train fever" and if anyone had thier feet on the ground when it came past they had it and we would avoid them for days lol

we used to have an old lady live round us and she was a bit of a recluse (very sweet in hind sight) we called her the crisp lady and we was scared of her. we would sit near her house and she would yell at us to clear off and we would "leg it" so fast i nearly fell over once lol but if you stayed long enough you would get a bag of crisps....i never styaed long enough.

went for a walk with my best friend when i was about 9 and went to find "wild horses" we even took a rope to use as a bridle. we found the horses but couldnt get the rope on them it was so funny chasing them around and thinking we knew what we were doing. we had to cross a bull field to get there and had to crawl under a barbed wire fence to get away from the chargiong bull

My sister used to 'rescue' animals mostly caterpillars and other insects that fell in the swimming pool

she used to call them her 'darlings' and keep them in a shoe box in her room

they used to get various treatments including the kiss of life and 'acupuncture'

there would often be quite a bit of movement after the 'acupuncture' - she was indeed a formidable healer

(of course she denies it all now) ?

* Petal water

*Grass 'nests'

*Made miniature gardens with moss as hedges

*'Burying' dead animals, normally voles and mice, a couple of times hedgehogs. First time my Mum said 'don't touch dead hedgehogs - they'll have fleas/germs'. So the next time I found one, in the middle of the(fairly busy) road (Mum hadn't thought of where dead hedgehogs were likely to be!) I spent AGES trying to 'chopstick' it up with two twigs and eventually got it to the side of the road and 'buried' it under some grass, beneath a hedge.

*Destroyed a piece of polystyrene into thousands of wee white balls on my first day of primary school and got a break time detention...my FIRST day, meanies!

*Got my words confused when my parents were having a dinner party and popped my head round the dining room door and instead of asking if I could have some pecan nuts I asked for some penis nuts! Wasn't sure why the adults fell about in tears of laughter but, being a child and having found something to amuse the grown ups with I kept on and on until I got told off for being inappropriate. Think I was about seven.

Most of these are great!!

I also remember the biggest laugh i ever got was me aged 2/3 walking into the living room dragging my brother's massive guitar case into the room, announcing i was going to give a concert, and then opening the case and pulling out my tiny fisher price ukelale from the case (which i had replaced) and proceding to sing something from the Muppets.

I was so excited by the belly laughs i got, that i put the toy guitar back in the massive case, dragged it back out and then re entered and repeated the whole skit. (learning that it wasn't quite as funny the second time) Bless me.

I remembered another one, on the subject of dead animals ?

My sister's mouse died when we were around 9/10. We held a funeral in the back garden and used a glasses case as a coffin. I walked down an aisle of little kids holding it while somebody hummed the Death March - I couldn't keep a straight face and burst out laughing. It made my sister cry!

My sister did something similar to this - she left her wallet at a friends house, the friends mum opened it to find out who it belonged to and there was a bag of white powder that when the police looked at it turned out to be talcum powder! Now, either she was a silly 13 yr old trying to buy drugs and got talcum powder instead or her excuse was true that she just liked the smell and wanted to take it out with her. Who knows ?

We also did the water and petals perfume.

My neighbour and I started a car washing business and bothered people who parked in our lane when they came to walk their dogs (lived in the countryside)

My sister and I tied a girl to a tree at a bbq because she was so annoying with rope and a bicycle chain, my parents secretly thought it was very funny but had to be seen to tell us off. The girls mother was hysterical, the father was one of my dad's senior colleagues...

I stuck my chect out every time we walked past M&S in the hope that my mum might say that I needed a bra as I was too afraid to ask for one (was flat chested but everyone at school had one!)

I told my music teacher that I was spanish as I'd been to Barcelona on holiday. He brought it up so many times that I really went off music and tried to get out of going to his lessons

My sister and I would force our parents into watching our shadow puppet shows and "clothes show live" events, for hours..

I was in several clubs (one after another with the same friends), all had secret passwords and we made up badges like Brownies which you could earn.

We'd go up the lane and collect caterpillars and butterflies and put them in a friends greenhouse where we'd made a cage out of netting and filled with plants we bought down the road. We also collected ladybirds as well to go in the greenhouse. Unfortunately none of the butterflies survived very long ️

We also did the petal water, and painted pebbles and sold them for 2p each to the lady down the road.

When my cousin stayed over we'd plan to go on a ghost hunt in an abandoned house which was about a mile away. We never actually got there but we did get up at midnight a few times to get some food and try to work out what we needed to take with us.

I also ran away with my cousin once, I think we took an apple between us, went around the block, got bored and so went home! Also there was a field behind her house and we tried fishing in the stream and attempted to build a small house with bricks, but we only had enough to go up two layers.

And finally I'd do plays for family and friends with a couple of friends of mine. Oh my poor parents having to sit through them ?

We lived near the Tomato marketing board (as was) in Guernsey, so we had lots of (rotten) tomatoes to throw at each other. Nice. They also had loads of stacked crates outside so we'd spend hours climbing them as they changed all the time and would be our castles.

There was a house next to this place where a load of Portugese people lived, as they were working in some greenhouses nearby. Once, my and my friend were playing near the crates, and a couple of the women stopped to speak to us and asked us in for a drink. We accepted and got a glass of squash each. In hindsight, not the most sensible thing to do, considering we'd been taught about stranger danger all our lives.

There was a derelict building near by as well, where we created our club house. It wasn't a big place but I do remember there being some very nice feature fireplaces which people would pay a fortune for now. I was gutted the day they tore it down, even if I was past the age of playing there, it still had loads of memories for me.

I didn't make perfume but I was ubsessed with making mud pies.

A friend and I once collected a load of wild flowers to sell on the wall for 5p a bunch. We didn't sell any and the flowers died pretty quickly.

Having read Toms Midnight Garden, I became obsessed that there must be a secret world at my grans just because she had a grandfather clock. So, ignoring the fact that the clock hadn't even worked during my time and probably most of my mother's life, I went in search for it. In the end I gave up, and used my imagination instead. ?

I used to play vets with the cats at my grans. I would check their eye's to make sure they were clear, check their teeth, claws and anthing else I could think of. I'd then note it all down in a little note book. I have to say that the cat's were very patient with me. My gran kept the note book as well as she showed it to me a couple of years back.

One of my grans cat's had kittens and we'd been told numerous times that we were not to disturb them and to leave them alone as the mum was a first time mum and she was nervous. Well me and my brother thought we knew better as we'd visited Susie (the kittens grandmother) numerous times whenever she had kittens and she was so relaxed. Two days later, we had to go back to my grans with a basket to collect the 4 week old kittens as the mum had abandoned them. Cue a good few weeks of dad getting up every 2 hours to feed them.

I used to do the play thing too with my cousins and brother. ? My eldest cousin was always the narrator and my brother got forced into playing any leftover parts that my other cousin and I didn't want. What's worse is we used them as a fund raisled ing excersise and used to charge our poor parents money to come and watch. They humoured us a couple of times and then, for some reason, paid us NOT to perform 'The Cat That Fell Over the Stone'. ☹️ All we wanted to do was raise enough cash to buy our uncle a wedding card.?

As we got older we got wiser, however, and realised that there was a positive correlation between the amount we could charge and not get laughed at and told to go away and the amount of wine our parents had consumed. This culminated in the great art exhebition of 1990 to raise money for St Tiggywinkles home for hedgehogs where we literally scribbled on bits of paper and charged an extortionate amount of money for entry. My Mum, who was the nominated sober adult that night, was aghast and made sure that we actually donated all the money the following morning.?

Oh God, there are too many but here`s a couple:

having a picnic on a (road/traffic) roundabout and friends dad driving past on his way home from work and absolutely bollocking us for being so stupid

making my sister go down the stairs in a big box (I told her it was like a fairground ride)

making `nests` for lady birds in my school socks (put grass down them, then collected lady birds to put in my socks)

being on a plane with my nana and grand dad at the age of 3 and the hostess coming round and asking me what I`d like to drink-I picked up my grandads cigarette from the ashtray and said "a whisky and dry ginger please" I just couldnt understand why everyone was laughing

Climbed a wooden fence and then slid down it - result was I got a butt full of splinters ( embarrassing my mum picking out the splinters in front of my auntie and girl cousins?)

got a marble stuck in my ear whilst pretending to be Uhuru from star trek

ran backwards an fell into a bucket full of warter getting myself wedged in

pretended to be torville & dean on roller skates and ended up breaking my arm

Just had a look back at the thread-these are hilarious, esp the animal ones-which made me remember another-I `rescued` a cat once and kept it in my room for a whole day, it had diarrhoea all over the place which I covered with a tea towel and then set the poor cat `free`. my mum went absolutely ballistic when she discovered the cat diarrhoea and I remember us both heaving when cleaning it up ?

?This has made me laugh so loud the cat has looked up. That really is very funny (sorry!) ?

Something (vaguely) similar happened to me at the big Blackpool pool. I got in just before wave time (I must have been about 8) and got myself a spot at the deep end, holding onto the bar. I had no idea you were meant to stand and jump the waves. I had to stay there for 15 minutes, I thought I was going to die but obviously didn't believe it enough as I didn't have a voice saying "So that's how you died. You're 8 and you drowned at Blackpool. Oh well; you've had a good innings." ?

Next time I was at a pool with waves, (not at the deep end holding on!) as soon as one went over my head, I panicked so much they had to switch the waves off and the lifeguard had to pull me out. I'd completely forgotten about all of this! ?

I remember being at the swimming pool and ptting my armbands on my ankles and then screaming as my top half kept going under water and I was choking. I also remember my cousin telling me to sit in the rubber ring which I did, my bum slid down and I got stuck in it with my hands and feet hanging out the top and he couldn''t help me for laughing.

I think I was about 12 or so when my friend and I used to go to her local (Indian) corner shop. I used to put on a French accent and pretend to be French (I probably sounded like Joey from Friends ?), telling the shop keeper I was from France and ran a magazine, asking if he would like to take out an advert. I think we really believed he wouldn't know as he wasn't English. ??

Ja ba boo Claude, bloo ba loo fa foof.

Petal water - check!

In the 70's mum and dad used to have "Abagails Party" type dinner parties, and we used to fall asleep on the guests fur coats that had been deposited in mum and dad's badroom. Next day we used to scavenge down the side of the sofas for loose change fallen out of the guests pockets.

Most ofmy stupid things as a child came from jumping off things, or falling off things.

Jumped off garage roof onto old matress and broke ankle.

Climbed on top of bedroom wardrobe in middle of night (no idea why!) - wardrobe started wobbling so jumped off it onto bed, stuck arm out to stop it falling (as if a 6 year old's arm would stop it!) ended up with broken arm.

Whilst performing "ice skating" wearing socks on lino floor in bedroom, skidded into above cupboard and chipped bone in my toe

Used parents bed as trampoline after being told numerous times not to, fell off and pulled ligaments in leg.

Decided to learn how to skateboard by starting at top of very hilly road, halfway down realised I didn't know how to stop, so fell off into main road and injured arm.

Decided to see how far I could cycle down pavement with eyes closed and went straight into lamp post at speed (still have a bump on forehead from this!)

About a month after cycling incident, went to friends house who had an new fangled "up and over" garage door, decided to play with it and pulled it down on my head.

Sis and I having arguement, I tried to get in her room, and left my fingers in the door hinge, then pulled her door shut in a diva moment, breaking 2 fingers

sliding down stairs on silky bed quilts and went too fast, hitting head against large banistair

All the above happened in the space of about 5 years and all resulted in hospital visits! - It was all about 35 years ago, and I'm sure if it was now, I'd be on the child protection register!!!!

I must have been about five and one Saturday my Dad took my swimming, he left me in the kids pool to go and do lengths in the adult pool and I decided I would perform an experiment and see what happens when I put my armbands on my ankles...I got as far as getting them on one ankle (with some difficulty) before the lifeguard came over and told me off, and for years I couldn't work out why I wasn't allowed to do it...

Also, I somehow convinced myself that if I didn't get out of the bathroom before the toilet finished flushing a witch would get me.

Also apparently my Dad intercepted me right at the last minute when I was about to step into my paddling pool with the extension cable for the lawn mower.

And h2b was play fighting with his dad when he was younger, fell awkwardly and broke his wrist and then promptly told everyone in A&E that his dad did it, causing an investigation...

Did anyone else lick batteries to see if they would get a shock? (or was that just me?!)

Also remember once picking dandelions and licking the "milk" out of the stem - mum caught me and gave me a huge dose of Milk of Magnesia for some reason!

I got hold of a box of matches once and degided to light them under parents bed covers (so they wouldn't see me!) - set fire to bed.

Got hold of dad's razor and decided to shave my face like dad did, gave myself a tiny nick which bled so smeared the blood all over my face and went downstairs, razor in hand - mum nearly fainted when she saw me!

Crikey, when I read back on all these things, I must have been a nightmare child, and my parents must have been on tenderhooks all the time, wondering what I was going to do next!

Another petal water seller - although we also branched out to 'roasting' the leftover petal mulch in my friend's grandad's oven and then selling it as pot pourri!

My mother bought us a bean bag and my sister and I spent an afternoon 'crash-landing' on to it from the sofa. Of course, it burst and the little balls went everywhere. We decided to unzip the sofa covers and cover the floor with them to hide it. Also broke the hoover trying to vacuum them up. My mother came in to find a smoking hoover and, on lifting one of her sofa covers, a deep carpet of tiny white balls.

My uncle once dazzled us by cracking an egg on the bonnet of his car while he was washing it one really hot day and letting us see it fry. We went inside and mixed up eggs, flour, water, sugar, milk and went back outside and tipped the bowl of 'cake mixture' over the bonnet hoping it would instantly 'bake' into a cake. It just caused a sticky mess over my uncle's BMW, making him apoplectic as he was about to go out on a date.

I once put on a nativity show with my riding my sister as the donkey (on all fours with a dressing gown rope through her mouth as a bridle) and me clutching my wailing three year old brother on her back. He was jesus and I was mary. I wore my mum's silk kimono dressing grown and my brother was in a tea towel loincloth. The only lines I can remember is 'What a joke - what hotel has no space for Jesus at Christmas time!?'

I got a summer job in an Indian restaurant at 15 (when I really should have known better), my best friend did too. The boss was horrible and we hated being in a dark restaurant when it was so sunny outside (we only worked 2 days a week though!) so we'd pretend to each other that we were single mothers and needed the money for our kids. Which meant conversations like 'How's your littlest one?' 'Oh he's ok, hope i get some good tips tonight though so i can afford some calpol, he's teething. How's you little Sarah?' 'Oh she's ok, needs some new shoes though, hopefully I can afford them next week'.
It made the job seem worthwhile and probably, now that I think about it, made customers tip us a lot more if they overheard!
We actually spent the money on Just Seventeen magazine, tinted lip balm and a 4 pack of bacardi breezers to last us a weekend!

I'm a little upset at you all referring to the perfume as petal water. It was PERFUME!

? ?

<trots off to find roses to prove you all wrong> With inflation, it could be sold for 20p a jar now, who'll be laughing then?

My sister & I were (by my own admission) precocious children. When we used to go to the pub with my parents (at my request - my favourite thing to do), to avoid talking to other children we would talk to each other in French as we were learning it at school (I was 7 my sister was 9) except our French wasn't that great, so we would talk in English, with a stong French accent if we didn't know the words

We also made 'sweets' out of milky way & mars bars to then sell to my poor mother. We thought they looked great (imagine a dollop of mars bar rolled into a sticky ball that could fetch 2p if my mum was feeling generous - you could easily make 10 balls from 1 mars bar, giving a clear 4 p profit)

Of course, making special shampoo out of everything that was in reach when in the bath tub (talc, My Matey, radox, shampoo etc) was the norm, as was putting on a show for my mum. We were the hosts, but also had to play the special guests

When I was very young (about 5) I used to disguise myself as a heap of washing. When it was time to change the bed sheets, I would put a pillow case on each leg, wrap the sheet around me and then climb inside the duvet cover, and then launch myself down the stairs to my mum to find & put in the washing machine. She fell for it every time!

Perfume out of rose petals..check..

However I progressed to bee and wasp soup as we had stacks of raspberry bushes, My grandad taught me how to catch bees in my hands(yes my hands ) , I can still do it too this day without getting stung.

I always wanted a horse but was told no, I used to go and try to ride the cows in the farmers field(quite a good ride once you are on)...only ever two broken arms from this, we did then move on to the Dartmoor ponies when we went on holiday cue one concussion and short hospital stay.

When our pond was frozen we had contests of who could put there legs in for the longest time once we had smashed the ice.(maybe thats the cause of my arthritis?)

Making new things(cars) to ride down the stairs on,the higher the better

?

I went on a school exchange in second year at senior school and it was too early as I had only been learning French for a year. The only other person there my age was a boy called Damien and we came up with this great plan that since we didn't know anywhere near enough French to get by for a week in Jarnac, we would just speak English with a French accent and that's what we did all week. ?