Inspired by another thread in GD... what was the most idiotic dangerous thing you did as a teen?

[Very_Boring_Name]

Mine was crawling under a train on my way to school

[seabeyond]

1. running from cops with two guys in the car open container.

was out in the middle of nowhere, four way stop, going too fast, no cars anywhere and went thru stop sign. two cops sittin in church parking lot chatting. two guys in car with open container, i didn't drink.

they came after me

i pulled into a neighborhood, parked and we hid behind the bushes. cops drove around with spotlight thing, but didnt find us.

hands down the stupidest thing i ever did. learned a HUGE lesson.

[stuntcat]

2. went to "haunted" houses

Late at night we'd drive out in the country to abandoned houses and walk around them looking in the windows. One looked like a place where people met for weird parties or rituals, with glow in the dark paint and holes burned in the floors.
We were lucky nothing happened to us, like Deliverance :scared:

[givemebackmycountry]

3. Acid.

And LOTS of it.

[Throd]

4. Acid and more acid

I once crouched in terror as I was menaced by an old rolled up piece of carpet that I thought was a bear. It may have been for 4 hours or for 33 seconds. My memory of the 80's is spotty at best.

[Incitatus]

5. went through a little bomb making phase nt

[Paradoxical]

6. I ran a marathon with 2 days training.

Yes, you're reading that correctly. 2 days. Two 30 minute jogs on a treadmill.

[susanr516]

7. Played with mercury

My father was an appliance repairman. Up to the early 1960s, washing machines had mercury switches that caused the washer to shut off when the lid was raised. I broke the ends off the glass tubes of the burned-out switches and poured the mercury in a pill bottle. I remember pouring mercury from one hand to the other. Yeah, there was lead paint in the house, too. My sister once said if the EPA knew how much mercury we had played with in our old house, they'd probably send in a hazmat team to tear it down.

[snooper2]

15. you are supposed to take the mercury and put it in a hollow point bullet

then carefully add a little piece of solder to the top and file it smooth...

Then you now have a mercury round :)

You should see what that does to a melon :P

[yankeepants]

24. I did that too!

My best friend's father was a dentist and his office was attached to her house. When the parents were out for the evening we would go in and do nitrous oxide and play with the stuff in the gigantic treasure chest that they gave out to the brave children patients and then we would get out the mercury that they had for fillings and play with it. Wasn't it cool?

I just recently started thinking how dangerous that was. Oh well. i've made it past 50.

[hyphenate]

29. That's interesting, because I did something similar

I had some mercur that I played with, that I put in a small container, and even to the point of dipping my ring in it, and turning to a silver color instead. I don't remember much else, but I checked out "mercury poisoning" online, and I didn't have to worry about it ultimately.

[XemaSab]

8. I wasn't a teen yet

but I used to sneak out of the house and wander around at night.

[madmom]

22. opps... wrong place

[struggle4progress]

9. You mean, like, things that could have ended very very badly but (by some incredible luck) didn't?

I forgot about most of them until my late forties when I made a real effort to forget about them again. There were certainly enough of them

Here's one

I hitchhiked across the country once back then. In California, I got a ride across the Sierra with some guy who had just fallen out with his girlfriend. It was a beautiful twisty high road with sheer drop-offs of hundreds of feet and no guard-rails. The fellow started chattering about how depressed he was: he just didn't think life was worth living anymore after his break-up: he was contemplating suicide, he said. Meanwhile, I'm looking at this gorgeous scenery and wondering how many years it would before anybody found our remains, if he took us over the edge on some hairpin turn there. I prided myself on my edgy sarcastic wit and sardonic black humor in those days; I simply loathed saccharine Pollyanna people. But I'm looking at the landscape, suddenly thinking how much I loved being alive and how much I hoped I see such beautiful days again -- and so for that poor guy I put on the best Norman-Vincent-Peale-Power-of-Positive-Bullshit I have ever managed. I was lyrical about sunsets and the glorious sunrises of new days and and how many different people there are in the world and how interesting everything is and how some wonderful thing might be around the next bend so, y'know, why not stick around and see what happens next because it might be really cool. And in the back of my mind, there's meanwhile this running patter: I really hope this dude is just playing mind games with. If he's not playing mind-games, I sure don't want to set him off. Best not show any nervousness or uncertainty. Be calm! Be happy! Omigod, I'm gonna fucking die! And so I never indicated the slightest discomfort to him. I was quite glad to get out of that car, but I hitchhiked for a few more weeks and got back home safely in time to attend a wedding. And moron that I was, I put the whole thing completely out of my mind -- though I never hitchhiked again after that trip

[Obamanaut]

10. A new boat ramp was built on a small river on one side of the bridge over

a divided highway.

Water skiers started using this boat ramp.

We would position one of our group on one side of the bridge, and he would tell us when to jump - not knowing exactly where the boat/skier combo would exit our side of the bridge.

Highway Patrol made us stop. Said something about it being foolish.

[rbnyc]

11. Hmmm....

Driving on acid
Hitchhiking
Having unprotected sex
Walking along the train tracks through a long and narrowing valley

[era veteran]

12. Shot tanks at night on acid in W Germany in'74.

Thank you US Army, still the most fun ever.
Like Dock Ellis, could not miss.

[meegbear]

13. Took a hit of THC (a downer) with speed (an upper) and went to school ...

Surprised I wasn't found out.

[Forkboy]

14. Crossing the top of an arched bridge a couple hundred feet high.

On acid.

[bif]

16. Drugs. Just about everything except acid.

Straightened out my senior year in high school. Lucky to be alive. A bunch of classmates overdosed on heroin and weren't as lucky.

[hobbit709]

17. Enlisted

[driver8]

18. Drinking, drugs, and trying to outrun the cops in a pick-up with five guys in the back.

I was in the cab -- none of us wearing seatbelts, and the truck went up on two wheels as we went around a curve. We should have all been killed. (I wasn't driving, BTW.). Of course, we were drunk and stoned.

[RebelOne]

19. Eloping to Georgia from Florida at age 16. n/t

[LanternWaste]

20. Passed a joint between two back-seat passengers in two different cars

Passed a joint between two back-seat passengers in two different cars as we were dragging (about 85mph) down a rolling, curving one-lane blacktop-- a crappy, weather beaten Charger (passenger side floor board was cardboard box tapped down), and an even crappier, more weather-beaten Nova.

Could be the most stupid thing I've ever done...

[yellerpup]

21. Vandalizing a Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK's house.

Could have been hurt a whole lot of ways doing that. I wasn't alone and it didn't look like he'd been living there regularly but it was scary/exhilarating at the same time. It's the only crime I ever committed and I still don't feel a bit bad about it.

[madmom]

23. Hitch hike around Columbus Ohio as a 16 year old female

[yankeepants]

25. Had unprotected sex, drank way too much, rode in cars with insane drivers, blew off school

blah blah blah. it's a wonder any of us survived

[shanti]

26. not too much as a teen

i was pretty sheltered, but when i left home, look out! that's when the dangerous things happened. :( thank god, i lived thru them.

[Kali]

34. that is called the poodle effect

:P

overprotected Foofoo gets out of the yard and goes berzerk, gets run over.

[shanti]

40. true

i've been run over a couple of times...but still standing! :hi:

[alphafemale]

27. umm...how long you got?

Going under, into, on top of and siting on top of stopped trains. Walking through abandoned mile long railroad tunnels. Tree shalom on a flexible flyer.

Sling shotting by getting way at the top of one tree getting it swinging letting go and letting it sling you to another one.

Playing on thin ice. Crashing through it once.

Climbing cliffs made of slate that could collapse at any moment. Saw a copperhead on one of those climbs.

Walking through mile long abandoned railroad tunnels that still had old sticks of dynamite here and there.

Balancing walk on a rail of a bridge that was about 3" thick and over 100 ft high.

[hyphenate]

28. Funny you should ask

as I was just recalling this the other day, and telling someone.

There was a very steep hill street in my neiborhood at the time, and I was riding my bike at the time. The bike was the kind with the coaster brakes on it, and my sister was sitting on the seat, and I was standing on the pedals.

As it happened, I lost control of the bike, and the brakes failed. So instead of finishing the ride, I crashlanded. I hurt my knee, and my sister hurt her shoulder.

It's not as dangerous as some people, but it certainly scared the hell out of me, thinking about other potential disasters.

Oh, and at point in my teens I shoplifted for a while. Nothing extravagant--mostly (of all things!) books.

[UrbScotty]

30. Walking around campus... in the middle of the night... in a power outage... with floods. (nt)

[Rhythm]

31. Pick-up-truck surfing...

Back in the mid-80's, my buddy Charlie and i would roar through the streets of Charlotte NC at 3am, one of us standing in the back of his old Toyota truck, holding onto nothing but an old water-skiing tow-rope that was tied to a metal ring bolted into the bed floor. We'd crank up some Cramps or Black Flag, and be singing along while hopping across railroad tracks and right through downtown at 60mph. Then we'd pull over and switch places for the return trip.

I hadn't thought about it much until Cincinnati Bengals player Chris Henry died from a fall from the back of a pick-up.

Gods we were a couple of dumb-asses. It's a wonder i'm still here...

[blueamy66]

33. We surfed in irrigation ditches, kinda like you did

at least we had water involved :-)

Ever swim through an irrigation pipe under a street? Now that's STUPID.

[backwoodsbob]

32. stole 4 pounds of pot from my dealer

we knew his routine and when he wouldn't be there and took his whole stash.

To keep him from suspecting us we called him two days later looking for a lid.

If he had figured it out he would have had us killed

[Kali]

35. sex, drugs, rock and roll

and alcohol. LOTS of alcohol.

[pink-o]

36. The brakes on my VW went out

and I almost ended up in a very busy intersection before I could stop it. So what did I do? I continued to drive home another 10 miles, using the handbrake!!! Including coasting down an huge, curvy hill in first gear to get to my friend's house. At age 56, I just cringe thinking about it!

Also, smoking cigarettes. So pissed @ myself for that one, even though I quit at 26. As for drugs, let's just say I did 'em when they were counterculture. Now that Big Pharma and The Man are pushing them on My Generation, I absolutely refuse! I'll control my insulin, blood pressure and cholesterol naturally, thank you!

[tigereye]

37. driving 8 friends in my parent's ratty station wagons

while telling parents I was just driving to the local mall, not 40 miles away. Otherwise, I was pretty much a goodie-goodie.

[GoCubsGo]

38. Damn, I was a boring teenager.

The most idiotic thing I ever did was inhale the nitrous oxide from the used whipped cream cans. This while we were cleaning up after the Baskin-Robbins store where I worked closed for the day. Pretty pathetic in comparison to all the other posts here.

[applegrove]

39. I had a friend who obviously was used to waterslides. I took a whole gang

of my friends to a waterfall/rapids in the woods near my cottage and she jumped in and slid down before I could say anything. She hurt herself a little. I could not believe that.

I went white water canoeing when I was 17. We went when the water was low so it was pretty safe.

We used to cliff jump at the cottage but I never jumped from heights of more than 30 feet.