Oh deer lowered. I might need the whole weekend to compose this novel. I was a complete & utter crazy b*stard-child for much of my adolescence.
you ain't seen nothin' yet, youngster. i have tales that could curdle a parent's blood. the only solace i can take is that: 1. i never hurt anyone (seriously) but myself 2. i never went to jail (until i was 27...damn you West U PD)
it's a long story...i'll include it in my master's thesis on juvenile (and adult) delinquency to be posted at a later date. West U jail is a tough, tough place. avoid it at all costs.
I only can remember a couple stupid things. One time my dog and this other dog were fighting and I decided to jump in and stop the fight. Being that I was only like 5yrs old, I didn't do so well. I think my ear almost got ripped off and I need some stitches. And, IIRC, one time I was playing around with some scissors and cut my lip bad. Don't ask why, I don't even remember. It just happend. If I remember some more, I'll try to add them. My memory sucks so I may just have to ask my family. edit: Oh yeah. I remember when I was real young I would let ants sting or bite me, whatever they do, because at that time I figured everything that hurt was good. Since I had gotten shots and had nasty medicine, it seemed logical at the time.
I have accomplished many stupid things in my adolescents, but one that really stands out would be the time I found a .22 bullet along the railroad tracks. I think I was 7 at the time, I decided to take it home and see if could set if off. I set it the middle of the sidewalk and preceded to smack it with one of my dads hammers……………finally, ( BAM !! ) I was very lucky, only a small piece of the casing was lodged in my finger.
I drew a naked lady in Sunday School when I was in 3rd grade. Man, that was far and away the dumbest thing I did as a kid. I still pray for forgiveness on that on occasion. When I was 7 (I think), I decided to stick my finger in the hole of a plug outlet. I got shocked.
That reminds me of something my friend did. Back in 7th grade we had this real tough strict history teacher. She gave us a pretty big project where we had a lot of papers we'd have to turn in. After the due date, my friend told me he couldn't find his picture of Anna Kournicova (however you spell it.) Later, we got our projects back and my friend motioned to me to look at his project. The last page of the paper stack was Anna in a pink dress and looking good. Just thinking of my teacher seeing that while she graded papers made me laugh and I couldn't stop. I felt bad for my friend but I don't think anything bad happend to him.
When I was a kid, I got caught trying to shoplift a Star Wars Ty-Fighter from the drugstore. The manager told me he was going to send me "up the hill" and told my Mom. I cried and never stole anything again. When I was in 7th grade, I got sent home from camp for smoking cigarettes and making out with some chick in the shower (we were both fully clothed). Pretty normal for a 7th grader, right?....except that it was a church comfirmation camp. Then there was the time I got thrown in a downtown Houston jail on a Saturday night for indecent exposure. That was college and that's another thread...
Christmas break, my senior year in high school. My friends and I are sitting around bored, trying to think of something to do. Fine, we'll go play capture the flag. Sounds harmless enough. We'd been playing for at most an hour when the police showed up. For playing capture the flag you say? Too bad we were playing in a fenced in piece of property with "No Trespassing" signs, which contained a graveyard surrounded by a second, inner fence. I hadn't wanted to go in the first place, but gave in to my friends who did. So anyway, the police catch twelve of the sixteen of us that are there. They didn't want to do all the paperwork that would be required to throw the dozen of us in jail, and seeing as none of us had a record, they took our names and numbers, gave us a warning, and let us go. Great, we all go home and laugh about it. So that all happened in December. A couple of months go by, I hadn't thought about it at all, and in March I get pulled over for passing in the median. I was pissed off that they pulled me over considering the circumstances, but that's another story. Anyhow, cop comes up, tells me why he's pulling me over, asks if I have any outstanding warrants, yadda yadda yadda, goes back to the cruiser and checks me out. Comes back and asks me about the trespassing. What? Well, I tell him what happened and that we were let go with a warning, he says ok, gives me the ticket and I go on my way. Now I thought that was odd, but I started to get really worried a couple of weeks later when a law firm sends me a letter offering to represent me in court. That one really made me sit up and take notice. I've yet to receive anything in writing from either a police officer or a court. All I knew was that I'd been giving a warning and told if I got caught trespassing again that I'd be going to jail. A couple more months go by, and I graduate. Do the whole ProGrad thing, and the next night go over to a friend's house to hang out. That's when I find out that one of the girls that had gotten caught with us had gotten a citation and a notice that she had a court date that morning right after she had gotten home. Great. The rest of us get one over the next two weeks. Turns out the county had asked the owners of the property we were trespassing on if they wanted to prosecute us, and they said yes. We ended up settling out of court, and each of us had to pay a little under $600, to pay off the owners and a lawyer who had helped us out. So the moral of this story is, "Don't play capture the flag in a graveyard."
It was 1960-61. I was 7 years old, we were playing army in the empty lot across from 713 Garden Oaks Boulevard. We had a flag; it was a windy day. The flag fell to the ground, so we understood it as our responsibility to burn it. We set the flag afire. It was a windy day. The flag fell over again and caught the dry grass on fire. We dropped a flat piece of plywood on the burning flag and the fire spread in a circle. We started a bucket brigade the 50 yards or so to our outside faucet at 713 Garden Oaks Boulevard. By the time we got back almost the whole lot and a couple of big trees were aflame. One of the neighbors called the Fire Department. That night I got my hide tanned.
Amazing!!! I had a very similar event happen at around the same age. We lived in a cul-de-sac and had miles of woods behind all the houses. Someone had dug a big trench behind a neighbors house in the woods. A friend had a book of matches and lit some and threw them in the trench. There were some dry leaves in the trench which quickly caught fire. Well the fire wasn't big enough for us so we threw lots more dry leaves on the fire. This fire soon took on a life of its own. Next thing I heard were sirens and 3 fire trucks pulled up. Boy did I get my hide tanned.
The fire stories remind me of another: My senior year in high school, 4th of July, me and my friends decide to go to the elementary school in Prestonwood (forget the name) and blow off some firecrackers. I decide to try and scare my girlfriend by lighting a smoke bomb and throwing it in the dumpster, then tell her the dumpster is on fire. So I light it and toss it on in. We all got a big laugh. Problem is that those smoke bombs actually produce a flame before they start smoking. So...after a few minutes of me "joking" around saying the dumpsters on fire, we start to see an orange glow in the dumpster. That baby's on fire! Being the stupid kids we were, we decide the best course of action is to jump in the car and drive away at top speed. We drive around the block a few times and then drive back to the school to see the flames coming from the dumpster were now about 20 feet high and coming close to the trees. We went to a phone booth and made an quick call to the fire dept. We almost burned down that whole school down.
It'd be easier to list the few smart things I did as a kid. I was one of those kids that did lots of bad things but never got caught. I think I had a guardian angel or something. (Considering that I have survived a major car wreck and bank robbbery in the last 6 months, I think that she's still on duty) My favorite dumb (and non incriminating) things would have to be: Jumping from pickup to pickup in traffic...ONCE Ditched my Dad in Hong Kong and wandered around Kowloon for a day...I eventually found my way back to the island and the Mandarin Hotel with all sorts of black market Apple 2 video games Climbed onto the Beltway 8 overpass over I-10 near Town and Country Mall while it was still girders and hung over the freeway
I burnt a huge section of the woods down near my grandma's house on my uncle's ranch in Florida. The forestry dept. had to come out and watch it for hours after it was put out by my relatives... needless to say I'm a pyro.
Where the hell have YOU been?? I haven't seen you here in forever. Unless of course, you've been back for some time and I just never noticed. Whatever. Good to see you again.
