It's amazing some of these people are even here to share their stories in the first place. Growing up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s was much different than life as a kid today. If you've never played unattended with fire, built a ramp off your roof into the swimming pool, or swam in a superfund site, you probably weren't a latchkey kid.
Sucked In To The Sand
“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 mud bath, 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.
Edit: we were about 9 years old. To this day, it is still one of my most fun memories.”
Don’t Forget To Lock The Gate Behind You!
“When I was a kid in Africa. Some killer bees decided to build a hive inside of a street lamp in our neighborhood. On the Saturday, all the neighborhood kids would gather around and throw rocks at the street lamp. What ensued could best be described as hundreds of angry African killer bees swarming the entire neighborhood.
When you heard the bzzzzzz, you took off running for your life. Everyone ran for the nearest gate…even if it wasn’t your house. The messed up part is we used to lock the gate behind us, because kid logic (thinking that somehow locking the gate would prevent the bees from going above the gate before you got to the actual house). This meant some of the slower kids got stung a bunch of times before they found someone to finally let them in.”
I Have Not Been On A Tractor Since
“We moved a little out of town to a rental property with some acreage when I was around 8. The owner had left a bunch of farming equipment around.
I quickly discovered that I could jam the spiral bit of a wire coat hanger down the ignition of the tractor, and turn it on.
So of course, whenever my parents where out and I was home alone, I’d jump on the tractor and joy ride around a 100 acre really hilly, muddy paddock. I didn’t really understand gears, or how to drive cars or motorcycles, etc; but my favorite thing to do was rev the engine, and then throw it into gear. The tractor would take off, lifting the front wheels off the ground and wheeling about 50 yards before slamming back down. I’d wheelie so hard, and get the tractor so vertical that I’d slip off the seat, fall to the ground, leaving the tractor to continue on till it hit a tree or a fence and conk out.
I did that twice, before realizing that I probably could have been crushed and killed. I’ve not been on a tractor since.”
Crash Test Dummy
“My dad had this station wagon from the late 1970’s throughout most of my childhood that I thought was amazing. It was big and there was so much room to play in the back. Sometimes I would put on puppet shows for the cars behind us in traffic when we stopped at a red light. As dangerous as it was for a small child to be loose in the back of station wagon without a seatbelt, I used to love playing an even more dangerous game sometimes.
I would lay across the top of the back seat and try to remain as stiff as possible. When my dad would brake/accelerate, the momentum would cause my body to fall either on the cushioned seat in front of me or on the the old couch cushions my dad had put in the back. I thought it was so much fun to roll and fall one way, then get back up and fall the other, and I would play this game a lot.
Because this game was kinda supervised, it wasn’t until years later that I realized how dangerous that was. I was a kid just openly playing a falling game in the back of a station wagon. If we had ever gotten into any sort of accident I would’ve gone flying out the front or back windows and probably killed instantly. Still, I had so much fun playing that game.”
Epic Cannonball
“I remember climbing onto the 2nd story roof and jumping into the pool. My parents’ house is abnormally close to the pool (maybe 8 feet away) and when we were kids, we would wait for our parents to leave then climb up on the roof and make the (relatively) big jump into the pool. This eventually led to us skateboarding, riding BMX bikes, etc., off the roof into the pool until the neighbors called our parents. Surprisingly I can’t recall getting grounded for this ever — they seemed to trust us (????) since we had done it so many times and no one ever got hurt. This was maybe when we were 8-15 years old.”
My Intuition Told Me It Was Bad
“I used to pop the screen off my first floor bedroom window as a 7th grade girl and sneak out in the middle of the night to take walks and listen to music on my iPod. To this day – as an adult woman, I have absolutely no idea what was going through my head at the time. I was never scared either – I just did it to relax. Even had a moment once where I was walking and had my headphone volume turned all the way up and didn’t notice a car had pulled up next to me and was slowly following me. I looked over and finally noticed a man alone in the drivers seat, staring me down. Again, it’s the middle of the night, and I’m a 7th grade girl walking alone. He started to roll his window down to say something and I booked it screaming bloody murder and ‘help’. I was out of my neighborhood at that point too. The car sped off and some people in the nearby houses either turned their porch lights on or stepped outside to see what was going on. I had explained what happened to a woman who asked if I was okay and she was horrified that I was just out and about around 3am alone. She told me she wouldn’t tell my parents but that I absolutely had to get home and never do that again. She even offered to drive me but I said I could make it back. She was very obviously concerned for my well being, where I wasn’t really that phased. I went home, and continued to take nightly walks until we moved out of that house.
I have no idea why or how I’m alive today. I was extremely naive and stupid. My family still has never found out. I wonder a lot what would’ve happened if that car didn’t speed off. My intuition told me it was bad but didn’t tell me to stop walking around alone in the dark. I can’t even imagine the horror of wondering where in the world your kid went in the middle of the night when you check their bed the next morning and they’re still gone.
Absolute insanity. If any middle school/high school girls are reading this: please learn from my mistakes. I’m lucky to even be here or be alive. You can have angsty alone time to listen to music in the shower – not walks at 3am alone.”
Full Moon Falls
“I went tubing down the Gauley river in West Virginia when I was 11, unsupervised… many times.
By tubing, I mean on an old inflated innertube, with zero form of personal floatation.
Last trip was when I was 16 y/o and seven of us ate two hits of window pane each, split a quart of Popcorn Sutton’s moonshine, and set off down the river about an hour before dark. We took out just before the oooollldd bridge across from the Sunoco station on Rt 60. Just a bit upstream from Kanawha Falls, where the old bus is out on the rock.
We all lived to tell the tale, but for most of us, it was our last trip without a PFD.
Not sure how many people will be familiar with the dangers of this, but I promise, I wasn’t safe. We were running world renowned Class V whitewater rapids, on an old truck innertube. Wearing nothing but cargo shorts, inebriated, tripping, and with no form of communication or rescue devices.
It was a full moon though, so we had that going for us!”
Cops And Robbers
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“My sister and I played cops and robbers, during our summer vacations. The difference was we used a golf cart and a horse. The robber, usually my sister (10ish) drove the golf cart from a secret location and the cop (usually me, 12ish) rode the horse. The robber took off on the golf cart through the trails we had in our back yard, and the the cop hopped on the horse, bareback with a halter and lead rope “bridle,” counted out 60 seconds and raced after the robber. The one rule was, if you could catch up to the robber (while on horseback) and leap, or fall (which is what usually happened) on to the getaway vehicle (the golf cart) you won. I would literally jump off a horse going full speed to attempt to land on a golf cart driven by a 10 year escaping in the middle of the woods. My poor (but very good) horse would stop when I jumped off his back, slow down and turn around. Usually, I’d hoist my little self back up on his back using his mane and call for a rematch.
Looking back at it he probably could have done well roping cattle out west, but he always tolerated our nonsense. He knew what the game was and would make a point of getting me as close as possible to the speeding golf cart. Then it would start getting dark and my mom would holler at us to but the horses away and put the golf cart on the charger. I look back at it wondering how that was a normal daytime game. I’m too old for that stuff now.”
Those Dead Leaves
“So when I was about nine, my Grandma used to raise goats in her backyard. One day I was over there with my cousins and we were messing around, playing with the goats and feeding them the leaves off of this one really big tree that they seemed to really like. Now this tree was (and still is) huge, it’s about twenty five to thirty feet high and is leaning the corner wall with a whole lot of branches spreading outwards. I decided to do what the mind of any hyperactive nine year old might suggest is a ‘pretty good’ idea… and climb it as far up high as I can. My cousins didn’t really try to stop me because they were dumb kids just as well. I got to a certain height and realized I could just walk onto the roof of the neighbor’s house… which I did for a bit… then promptly deciding to go on climbing up even higher. At this point I am near the top and my cousin says something from down below, so as I look down I suddenly lost my footing and fall all the way down from where I was. Surprisingly none of the branches hit me, and I landed safely in a pile of dead leaves under the tree. Next to a concrete slab, a barrel of yard tools, and with a rounded manhole cover inches away from my head. Got up and shrugged it off completely unscathed, believe you me not even a single scratch or wound after a fall like that and I walked out with my cousins staring in awe.
A couple of years later, we were discussing the incident and only then did we realize that things could have gone very, very far south. Thank god for that pile of dead leaves though, still love that tree and would still climb it, now that I feel more confident in my maneuverability.”
He Clung On To The Wall For Dear Life
“One of the favorite places to hang out when I was a teenager was a disused railway bridge on the edge of the town. The land had began to reclaim the top and was all overgrown, except for a small part in the centre. There were amazing views of the town from there, and we used to head up there most summer evenings and relax with some smokes and drinks. It was fairly well hidden from public and the police, so we used to get up to no good. One dude who was super irritating used to tag along, as he was the younger brother one one of the girls. He was sat on the 1ft wall looking down at the stream below, and this lad grabbed him and dangled him over the edge. Was a pretty big drop down to the rocky stream underneath, maybe 30ft. The guy let go of the poor lads hand, so he grabbed the wall of the bridge, then he let go of his other hand. Again, he clung on to the wall for dear life. Then fell.
Luckily, there was no serious damage, other than his soaked clothes. The lad who dangled him over didn’t hang round with us after that, we made sure of it.”
That Was My First And Last Time Playing With Fire
“I had a friend when I was a kid who was a serious pyro. We lived down the street from this big field with a set of railroad tracks that ran through it. One summer he got the bright idea to combine a lighter and a can of hair-spray and test it out in this field in late August when it was nice and dry. Only started a little fire, but it quickly started spreading. The friend tried to stomp it out but I was wearing shorts and sandals so I wasn’t having any part of that, so ultimately we booked it. The WHOLE field burned down – dry grass up to our chest for several blocks long – we could see the smoke from our windows, we just knew we were busted. Fortunately the house like 3 blocks down in this field (that we didn’t know was there) was saved before the fire got to it, and the news said it was probably a spark from the wheels of a train, so we got away with it. That was my first and last time playing with fire.”
Watch This!
“I used to rollerblade off the roof and onto the trampoline….it hurts to think about it now. I’m still shocked I never got hurt!”
So We’ve Got That Going For Us
“A small group of us would go camping almost every night during the summer, and at least Fridays during the school year. One night we threw a can of spray paint in the fire and the resulting explosion triggered an addiction we didn’t know we had. We ended up blowing up at least 1 can a trip for 5 years. We saved all the ones we could find and had over 500 cans. We would climb trees or a ladder we lashed between 2 trees that was 15′-20′ high and 10′ from the fire, but never once got injured despite some close calls. Cans exploding immediately right in our faces, logs being launched out of the pit, shrapnel from the can and/or the ball in the paint would shoot between us while on the ladder. Oh, and we were not sober most of the time too. It was extremely dumb, but we never paid the price for it, though, so it’s one of my favorite high school era memories. And now, we’re experts in huckin’ dangerous stuff in a fire, so we’ve got that going for us”
I Was Gonna Drown
“So at this water park called Schlitterbaughn (idk it’s weird and it’s in America so idk) there is a river that goes by the side of it that’s not technically part of the park, but you can easily get in and out of it from the park. And people in tubes float down the river quite a bit. But there’s this one part where there is a dam with a gap for the tubes, but there’s a bit of rapids after that somehow has a flat rock that you can stand on and the current will push you, but there’s enough rocks that it’s definitely not a good idea to do that. So me and the boys, being the idiots we are, jump in the river without tubes to let the current pull us through the rapids (note that the current is really really fast so if you hit a rock you’ll probably break something or at least get a bad bruise). We get out unscathed and decided- you know what? forget waiting in lines, let’s do this for 5 hours. And we did. Until one time, I was going through and after the rapids the river gets suddenly deeper, and there was a whirlpool that I didn’t know about that sucked me down. In the 30 seconds I was down there, I decided I was gonna drown to death, but at the final moments it spit me back up gasping for air and I landed safely on the bank. I informed my friends of this, and then we decided to do it again for 15 minutes until a park employee told us to stop, cause small children were following our lead, and we headed back to the park.”
A Three-fer
“I used to fill balloons with my dads 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.
Oh, and going hunting with my friend at 13 and shooting at trees that we were standing near when one of us wasn’t looking to scare each other.
Also, almost becoming a vegetable a few times from freshly waxed handrails while skateboarding with no helmets.”
A Lifetime Full Of Questionable Decisions
“At 9, I boiled acid from a chemistry set and exploded the beaker spreading molten acid all over the room. Glass shards missed my eye by millimeters.
I built a ‘roller coaster’ track down a steep hill when I was 10. The trial run nearly killed me.
A friend and I built a spectacular bonfire out of a whole neighborhood worth of discarded Christmas trees. We built it inside a large storm sewer. It smoldered for days sending smoke out storm drains for hundreds of yards. I barely got out of the storm sewer alive. As far as I know, nobody even called the fire department. Apparently smoke coming out of drains was passe.
I rode my bike 45 minutes each way on rural highways with poor visibility and no shoulders in order to spend 10 minutes kissing a girl before her parents told me to go away. Age 14 was awful.
I stepped out into traffic in front of a bus in London England. I didn’t see the bus because I was a stupid American who looked the wrong way for oncoming traffic. I was pulled back to the curb by an anonymous hero who saved my life.”
Urban Scavenger Hunt
“When I was a teenager my friends and I used to organize these scavenger hunts in Downtown Chicago, but instead of finding things you had to do things instead. We got the idea from a Viva La Bam and it originally just started with 4 of us and a list of like 50 things and grew to like 35 people with a list of almost 200 things and thrift store trophy for the winner.
I did a lot of stupid things because of these scavenger hunts, because the list was ridiculous. Things like eating 6 raw eggs, eating a dollar bill, holding a conversation with a street sign for 5 minutes, crossing the street by weaving between cars during downtown traffic, jumping from stupid heights, etc. We even got kicked out of Water Tower Place for playing tag when it was rained out.
The amount of stupid things that were done on that hunt by a bunch of dumb teenagers was amazing. I’m honestly surprised that not one of us was injured during this, with the exception of my friend Ryan who got some sort of aerosol burn on his nip.”
The Devil’s Claw
“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.”
Run Straight At It!
“I remember my Dad took my sister and I hiking through the Whiteshell. He saw a bear cub on the trail ahead of us, and said ‘Okay kids, its more afraid of us than we are of it, so we’re going to run straight at it.’ My Mom and other Dad (I’ve always called him Stretch because my Mom and Stretch met in Scouting, and Stretch was his scouting name) were both reasonably experienced Scout leaders, and my sister and I knew my Dad was wrong, but didn’t have the confidence to tell him. When Mom and Stretch found out they were mortified. It’s now an ongoing joke between me and Stretch.”
Never Will I Ever Forget It
“I grew up in Kigali, Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide there were land mines all over the place. We used to walk to our primary school (about 1.5km). As kids we used to play soccer on the street while walking to school, so one day the ball fell in the bush as always, and I went for it. Little did I know the the stone-like thing under the ball was a notorious landmine. I got the ball and I asked the other older kid what it was. Ten minutes later, the entire neighborhood was on site talking about how I just cheated death. Never will I ever forget it. If I stepped on the mine that afternoon, I wouldn’t be writing this today.”
One Slip And I Was Sidewalk Pizza
“I grew up within the boundaries of Tufts University’s campus, at the end of my street was a campus building that was six stories high. I remember climbing to the top of the fire escape, stepping over the railing onto the slate pitched roof. I held onto the dormer and made my way on top of that roof, then I would walk up to the pitch of the roof and straddle the pitch and look out on the Boston skyline. I was under 10 years old. Well over a hundred feet up, one slip, and I was sidewalk pizza. I can’t believe I survived being a latch key kid in the 80s.”
Look Out Below!
“I used to have free rein in the woods behind the base housing at Fort Bragg. My friends and I would ride our bikes through the woods for hours in the summer at the tender age of 7 like it wasn’t a big deal. I’d never let my 7 year old now wander around the woods like that now-a-days. One day we found a vine that was dangling next to a ravine and do a Tarzan Juno across it. It was probably a good 30 foot drop to the bottom of a pit filled with jagged rock and dubious puddles of ick. I wasn’t supposed to show my parents, but I did one day and they freaked out and cut it down. My friends were mad at me for like a minute until they all agreed it was indeed incredibly dangerous and for the best. Perhaps the most logical conclusion I have ever seen kids come to in my life.”
Unwanted Visitor
“Back in the old days when folks didn’t lock doors, my unwise self used to go in my neighbors houses and wander about while they slept. Then I’d get scared and leave. Very dangerous as a 6yr old young lady.
Edit: it was 1994, my parents were sleep and I was stealthy. It was maybe they same 4-5 “family” houses on my block and I never got caught. I have many angels.”