Topic: Mad things you did as a kid

[Terry de Niro]

I saw Rob and Capon talking about daredevil things they did when they were young and it gave me the idea to start this.

One of the maddest things I did with a few mates as a kid was to sit on the top of a high-rise flat roof right at the edge with our feet dangling down.
They were called the Ford Towers and were located at the Ford Estate on the Wirral and there's a picture of them below.

The other thing was, we used to go on the Bidston to Wrexham rail line tracks and dig out the stones between the sleepers, leaving just enough room for us to lay down with our heads facing up and wait until a train arrived and then watch it go over the top of us by a few feet.

Still have cold sweats thinking how mad that was. 

[Chakan]

We used to have a peach tree in our garden, we'd take the fallen peaches from the ground and spray them with tons of deodorant light them on fire and then just throw them as far as we could.

[bradders1011]

Coins, stones and once an Argos catalogue on the railway line. Shit myself when the Pacer came and ran over the catalogue, it could have derailed it.

[Sir Capon of Debaser]

When i joined high school there was a hill by our school that a train used to pass over. All the older lads would go there for a ciggie at dinner. There was all these big trees with a rope on one of em and theyd swing from the top of this steep hill and the drop was massive. One day, we found a big plastic type of oil barell and filled it with a few bricks. A few of us got in one at a time and were pushed down the hill.

Uniform was wrecked and covered in cuts and bruises


Another time i was out on a night out for a staff christmas party. Me and 3 mates had been out for quite a few hours already to get warmed up for the meal that was starting at around 9. So when we left the pub wed been in when heading into town i saw a loada orange traffic barrier/fencing where work had been getting done on some road with lights and cones everywhere. I said to me mates 'Watch this' and legged it then somersaulted over the barrier.
 Didnt realise there was a ditch aboot 7ft deep on the other side cos it was dark and it had all these big fuck off pieces of metal sticking out the ground. Was actually lucky one never went through me.My new clothes were all torn and i was caked in sand and mud and had blood all over me.

Turned up at the works do about 10 minutes later and everyone was like 'what the fucks happened to you?' to which i just basically laughed

[Johnny Foreigner]

When the roads got a bit icy, it was a bit fun and scary to hold on to the bumper of the school bus and being pulled down the road to school.. the driver must have been a nervous wreck though..

[Sir Capon of Debaser]

Went on a school trip walking around some mountains. On the way back mate turns round and says lets take a short cut. So we slowly start goig down the side of this mountain when all this slate starts sliding. Next thing ya know, were just not stopping. Snow , slate and everything just coming with us. Big pieces of rock sticking out and its pissing down. Made it all the way to the bottom with out a cut on us and it felt like it went on forever. Just remember getting to the bottom and looking back up the mountain and then looking at me mate like 'What the fuck was that?'

[rob1966]

 Accidentally shot our kids mate in the back with an air rifle, thought it was unloaded, shot a fella who was up a ladder robbing roof tiles, funny as fuck when he fell off.

Once walked downstairs and said Ma, our kids just hit my in the head with a dart, she didn't believe me til I pulled my hand away and it was covered in blood. Darts fights eh?

Used to regularly set stuff on fire, used to burn model planes in the house, found out nail  varnish remover burnt well, spilt a load on the kitchen worked that went up pretty good, set a desk on fire in chemistry distilling crude oil, poured the petrol on the desk and lit it with a bunsen, got the fire out before the teacher saw it and another time set the sink on fire.

[Son of Spion]

Accidentally shot our kids mate in the back with an air rifle, thought it was unloaded, shot a fella who was up a ladder robbing roof tiles, funny as fuck when he fell off.

Once walked downstairs and said Ma, our kids just hit my in the head with a dart, she didn't believe me til I pulled my hand away and it was covered in blood. Darts fights eh?

Used to regularly set stuff on fire, used to burn model planes in the house, found out nail  varnish remover burnt well, spilt a load on the kitchen worked that went up pretty good, set a desk on fire in chemistry distilling crude oil, poured the petrol on the desk and lit it with a bunsen, got the fire out before the teacher saw it and another time set the sink on fire.

The old lady next door let her garden grow wild. In winter when everything died back and dried out we'd set the tails of paper planes on fire then glide them into the bushes to set them on fire. Then before it got out of control we'd try to put the fire out with water-filled fairy liquid bottles.

[AndyInVA]

In lower 6th when it snowed went to a local park with my Allegro and a couple of mates. Quite a big car park, so we start pullling had brake turns and massive skids with the car. I had a rope in the boot so we fed it into the passenger side and out through the driver window and then you could kneel on the sloped rear Allegro window and pretend you're in a Roman chariot as your mate drives you around pulling skids and slides. All fun and games until he deliberately drives under some trees and I'm getting thrashed by branches. Finaly gave up when we slid sideways into a rut and the car came to a dead halt. Some couple had been sitting in their car watching us reported my reg plate to the Police (some efort back then as no cell phones). Had to go and admit it all to the Police but thankfully they didn't charge me as I'd been honest and no real damage to the park.

[AndyInVA]

We used to have a peach tree in our garden, we'd take the fallen peaches from the ground and spray them with tons of deodorant light them on fire and then just throw them as far as we could.

That is the most mental simplistic teenage boy childish and totally hilarious thing I've heard in ages. Just the thing that when I saw my step son with a mate chucking stones over a hill, with no idea where they were landing I went absolutely apoplectic.

[afc tukrish]

Stole the car keys, snuck out, rolled my friend's car out the driveway and drove around. We were 10.

[AndyInVA]

Stole the car keys, snuck out, rolled my friend's car out the driveway and drove around. We were 10.

I don't know how you can do that, that young with a gear stick unless you grew up on a farm.

Impressive though. Normal 10 year old things to do. Pre X Box.

[afc tukrish]

I don't know how you can do that, that young with a gear stick unless you grew up on a farm.

Impressive though. Normal 10 year old things to do. Pre X Box.

Automatic tranny.

[Brissyred]

We went camping in wales with some of our neighbours, all the tents were in a field at the bottom of a big hill. All us kids climbed up the hill and decided to roll this big boulder that was at the top, down the hill. Took about 12 of us to dislodge it, must have weighed about half a ton.
It started rolling and got faster and faster, bounced over the fence, went about 20ft in the air, landed on top of one of the tents, carried on and came to a stop half way across the road after smashing its way through a dry stone wall. We all stood there watching and shitting ourselves.
Luckily no one was killed and we immediately packed up all the tents and went home without staying even one night.

Decided I wanted to take a mid air photo whilst jumping my bike, made a big ramp at the bottom of a hill, tied a camera to my head with some rope and sellotape and had one of those remote camera release cables attached to it, no gopros in them days. Plan was to operate the shutter release cable mid jump but the cable was too short to reach the handle bars so it meant only having one hand on the bars. Long story short the one handed landing was sub optimal and I ended up in hossy with a broken wrist and a few broken ribs. Worst part was the film door on the camera opened due to the crash landing so I never got the shot. Then I got a flogging as well for breaking my ma's camera.

1978, 14yr old me was in the IOM with my dad when he was was racing and we were all staying in a B&B, one of my dads mates who was a complete twat had a brand new Suzuki GS1000 and used to put the keys on the hook on the hall stand, he got smashed every night so one morning I got up before everyone else, took his keys, disconnected the speedo cable, took his bike and did a lap of the TT course, parked it back up, re-connected the speedo cable and put the keys back. 

[rob1966]

I don't know how you can do that, that young with a gear stick unless you grew up on a farm.

Impressive though. Normal 10 year old things to do. Pre X Box.

I drove my Dad's mini on Ainsdale beach when I was 7 or 8 and when I was 12 I used to wash his Mk2 Escort and works van and I'd drive the Escort in the street to turn it around to wash the other side, both manual cars.

[jambutty]

Automatic tranny.

You never told me that.

[BarryCrocker]

Rode my BMX up through storm water pipes for miles away from home without my folks knowing where we were.

[Chakan]

That is the most mental simplistic teenage boy childish and totally hilarious thing I've heard in ages. Just the thing that when I saw my step son with a mate chucking stones over a hill, with no idea where they were landing I went absolutely apoplectic.

Yup pretty much, you never, when you're young, think far ahead enough of consequences or anything that could happen. Flaming peaches landing anywhere and everywhere.

[Nobby Reserve]

Me and my mates used to always be having little fires on the big field behind our houses.

People used to dump stuff over their back fences and the fringes (about 20 yards) of the field were never cut so there'd be long grass and the odd tree and brambles, full of garden debris. This house (late 70's/early 80's) had dumped a pile of asbestos from when they'd had a new garage. Dunno whose idea it was but we went through a phase of putting small, broken sheets of asbestos on the fires until they exploded. I just hope I was standing upwind and didn't inhale too much!

We progressed onto aerosol cans. One day, in some school holidays, we literally went combing through bins on bin day to find more cans and ended up with about 40 between us, which we systematically exploded on a fire.

At the top end of the field they built a vicarage. During construction, the building site wasn't fenced off at all and we used it as a playground. One evening, we got a little fire going with off-cuts of timber. When they ran out, we just started using planks and bigger timber that was lying round. There was a stack of flooring/roofing joists and it just seemed natural to progress onto them. The little fire became a fucking big fire. We stopped when there was no timber left and it burned out probably hours after we all toddled off home to bed. Thought nothing more of it until the local newspaper arrived later that week with the front page headline about several hundred quid's worth of timber being burned by vandals, with police investigating. I was only about 11/12 and was shatting myself for about a month expecting to get locked up.

One bommy night, we arranged a firework fight with another group of lads from near where we lived. I don't think they took it as seriously as some of us did. I made a hand-held rocket launcher with an air-bomb holder. Fireworks were buzzing about around your head. We had them pinned down behind some trees when a mate fired what he called his nuclear missile toward them - a big, fuck-off rocket. It hit a tree trunk about head height and exploded impressively. They gave up at that point.

[SamLad]

seems like a lot of RAWK posters should have been drowned at birth. 

[rob1966]

Tower Hill was built in the 1960's and they built rows of houses in Blocks fo 2 or 3 rows  (A,B,C,D,E,F etc) with green space or car parks (example below)



There was a block in front of our block, then a field, then another block. At the end of the field was a car park  and another block that went 90 degrees. On November we built this huge bommy on the field, some woman was giving us loads of shit "you can't fucking build that outside my house", so we moved it to the car park. Someone lit it before bommy night and the fire was huge, we noticed the end wall of the house that was 90 degrees to the car park was starting to turn black - the Fire Brigade turns up to put the Fire out. When all the crap had been cleared, we'd melted the tarmac We'r lucky we didn't burn any houses down.

[rob1966]

seems like a lot of RAWK posters should have been drowned at birth. 

We're tame compared to some of the lads I grew up with, they were full on nutters, robbing cars and burning them, on the rob all the time, turning in to smack heads or gangsters, shit like that. I remember one who lived on the block behind us getting dragged out his Ma's house, they carried him laid flat, a copper had each leg or arm so he was like a horizontal jesus and another copper just kept volleying him in the head.

[Buck Pete]

We used to have a peach tree in our garden, we'd take the fallen peaches from the ground and spray them with tons of deodorant light them on fire and then just throw them as far as we could.

The kind of behavior the coppers on the streets of Belfast, Toxteth, and Moss Side would have relished. 

[McrRed]

Anyone else used to nick lorry inner tubes - take em to the garage and blow em up super huge? Then straight to the canal where a lovely day's sailing could be had.

Nicked a steamroller from the mancunian way when it was being built and crashed it into a lamppost. Not my finest moment.
Also not finest moment was throwing stones at the traffic coming down the mancunian way in rush hour once it was built.

No peaches involved but we spent a lot of time on the adventure playground there and there was always a fire going so of course paint cans got thrown in - until one day one blew up all over a kid's nylon trousers which promptly fused to the poor lad's legs. Not pretty.

Bored kids and a weak sense of self-preservation makes for really mad things to do

[AndyInVA]

We're tame compared to some of the lads I grew up with, they were full on nutters, robbing cars and burning them, on the rob all the time, turning in to smack heads or gangsters, shit like that. I remember one who lived on the block behind us getting dragged out his Ma's house, they carried him laid flat, a copper had each leg or arm so he was like a horizontal jesus and another copper just kept volleying him in the head.

It is not so funny when its actions that actually harm people or have the intent to harm people. Its more funny wehen its stupid young boys who cant think of the consequences and get lucky that no one got seriously hurt.

[rob1966]

It is not so funny when its actions that actually harm people or have the intent to harm people. Its more funny wehen its stupid young boys who cant think of the consequences and get lucky that no one got seriously hurt.

Yeah, knew some right psychos growing up.

Us lot were just daft kids, doing sometimes stupid dangerous stuff, falling out of trees, off rooves, into rivers or the canal, falling off bikes doing stupid shit. Aerosols in fires was a favourite of ours, used to go off like a bomb

[Son of Spion]

I remember riding with a couple of mates down the M57 on our bikes. 😲

[redbyrdz]

I remember riding with a couple of mates down the M57 on our bikes. 😲

We ended up on a motorway riding bikes too. It wasn't intentionally, we missed a turn and the road the continued turned into a motorway. It had a nice wide hard shoulder  and by the time we realised, it was too late to turn around. We just continued to the next exit and later thought, WTF did we do there?!

[Only Me]

Remember a rite of passage for some of the lunatics by ours was sliding down the German Wall on your arse.

It was a 60 foot high near vertical granite wall, which had a massive swastika spray painted on the top left corner of it, hence the name.

Its the retaining wall for the cemetery behind the Anglican cathedral, on the Duke Street side. Still gives me the heebie jeebies when I see it to this day.

So glad I said to myself "fuck that" at the time. No idea how kids weren't killed doing it.

[jambutty]

I climbed that wall as a 6 year old, easy to get up, hand holds everywhere, rough as fuck getting down.

If you're old enough to remember the terraced housing in the Georgian section with backyard privys, you might remember the 10 foot high, 8" wide brick walls lined with glass shards to keep us off (yeah, right).

Only the bravest would jump the 4 feet across the service alley to the other wall.

All before trainers were invented.

[bradders1011]

Spitting off motorway bridges.

Getting on random busses with no fare home and having to cadge it back off kindly old ladies.

[rob1966]

We used to walk along the canal up to Wango Lane at Aintree, walk up onto the Kirkby line, walk along the tracks (you had to jump over the third rail to walk on the track) go over the bridge over the M57, down the side and then run across the motorway to get back to where we started from.

I'd fucking kill my kids if they crossed a Motorway.

Between the raller and the canal is all this rough ground. There was this bit we called the 'G' force or the Ski Jump. It was a drop of about 50 feet into a hollow and then went back up about 8 feet. Our kid used to get amazing jumps off it, he once had a jump off on a Raleigh Burner with a lad on a DT125 bike and the bike only beat him by about 5 feet. Anyway one day, we're all there. I has a go on his bike, comes off the ramp and goes into a table top about 6ft in the air, problem was I stayed that way and slammed into the ground, ended up battered and bruised

[SamLad]

We used to walk along the canal at Aintree, walk up onto the Kirkby line, walk along the tracks (you had to jump over the third rail) go over the bridge over the M57, down the side and then run across the motorway to get back to where we started from.

I'd fucking kill my kids if they crossed a Motorway.

wouldn't that bugger up your delivery schedule?

[only6times]

Went to Granby for a weed.

[only6times]

Robbing detonators out of trains then setting them off by dropping a house brick on them.

Building a massive bommy against the gable wall of Speke road gardens tennies when they were getting demolished, the flames spread into the roof. Council could have saved a fortune by paying us.

The landing lights that go over the Mersey at Speke airport, walking along them to watch the sunrise and have hot knives. About 80 feet above the water.