WTF things you used to do and wonder how you're still alive....

[Bedheadretention]

I've just been reading the thread about people not being able to do simple jobs around the home e.g, changing a bulb/plug, and it got me thinking about when I was around 7-8 years old, not only being fully competent and able to rewire an electrical plug, but also jamming into the electric sockets wires from the video player in my bedroom that didn't have a plug (blue wire into left bottom wall socket hole, brown wire into right bottom wall socket hole) and the tv plug kind of wedging them in over the top after seeing my DF doing the same thing with other small electricals.

WTF did I do this? I thought at the time it was probably ok as DF did the same when a plug was missing, but part of me knew deep down it was wrong! TBF DF did go full on gobshite tell me off when he noticed, and unplugged them, muttering he would 'get me a plug', but then forgot, so I never received said plug, so just jammed the wires in again. I would go barmy if my dc did this, and am cringing now at nearly frying myself and thinking I could have caused a house fire too, (to be fair, this was early 80s, so slack on health and safety).

Please tell me I'm not the only knob to have done something so stupid, I've only just thought of this for the first time in decades and feel so daft. How did I not see what I could have done?

When I was at secondary school I used to cross a main road that often had a bus stopped at the corner. I would never look to see if any cars were overtaking the bus (hated straining my neck). No idea how I wasn't hit. I was a grammar school kid but not very street smart.

I also remember regularly striking matches against our living room wall when I was around 3/4. It used to make my twin brother cry!

I was able to climb on the counters to get them, please put your matches somewhere totally inaccessible. My parents really underestimated what I was physically capable of.

I feel better reading these. I did a lot of them, too, but I am such a staid, dull, fat, unglamorous, sensible sort of person now I don’t think my work colleagues would believe it of me. Am having a little smile to myself at recalling that I haven’t always been a grumpy old frump.

Walking home (about a mile) from the edge of my village at 3am along a deserted canal bank, because the night bus stopped there, and I didn’t want to get a taxi home as it meant less money for alcohol. 😬
Also going to concerts at Wembley and Birmingham NEC etc with a one way train ticket, and having absolutely no idea how I would get home, and again no money as spent on alcohol. 😳

@Armi, tell your work mates, your popularity would be sky high.....can you imagine their shocked little faces?

I Always think of myself as a goody two shoes, but then i think about some of the things I did.

Playing in the derelict mansion, no-one knew where we were, paddling in the stream/swimming in the river thames, with no adult supervision

Going to work and having to leave a meeting because I had hot and cold£ sweats hangover. Going into work on a Saturday (Monday to Friday professional job) to meet a deadline, with 2 colleagues, all desperately hungover.

Just remembered the time we all ate hash cakes at work funniest day ever! Not so much how did we survive but how did we not lose our jobs!

I think that this thread goes some way to show that actually most people are good.

I have hitched all over the world between ages 18-26. Only a couple of bad ones out of hundreds of lifts, people would take us to their home and give us dinner, stay over all sorts.

Sometimes risk and reward travel side by side.

I would kill my dcs if they got up to half the stuff I did as a kid. And young adult.

Used to take the riding school ponies back to the big field about half a mile away. Soon as we got around the corner hop on one bareback, no hat, headcollar and leadrope for a bridle, lead the others in one hand and then canter all the way across the field we had to cross. I remember the leadrope coming unfastened from one side one day and ending up galloping around the big top field 3 times before I managed to pull up.

Jumping massive fallen logs in the woods we weren't supposed to. Galloping up the side of the golfcourse cos we had been caught riding on it again. Galloping up the side of the farmers field, realising I couldn't stop at the top, managed to turn right luckily and gallop down the side of a pretty fast road on a wide verge before it opened up enough to turn him in a circle to stop.

Then there was the drink and drugs. I used to go to a pretty notorious club in Sheffield. It was basically a drug den, full of gangsters. Loads of shootings and knife crime, it was closed down by the police in the end. Used to be absolutely off my face on Es and coke.

Went home with randoms regularly or invited them back to mine. Ex boyfriend used to drive us home, he was usually so off his face he could hardly talk. But we still used to get in the car with him.

At the time I was a financial adviser for a big bank. Regularly turned up for saturday appointments with a wrap of coke left to keep me going to 1pm. How I managed not to get the sack I don't know.

Went to ibiza a couple of times on girls holidays. Dd is never, ever, ever going on a girls holiday.

So many of these I'm nodding at

The one that always makes me go cold when I think about it is the time I was swinging on the beam of a big wooden gate. I was about 8 and as I swung it came down hitting me squarely on top of the head. I was knocked out. Came round to a worried friend but did the whole bravado thing and went home.
I went home and said nothing. Within hours I was being sick, but at the time had no idea about concussion and the like. Mum assumed I had picked up a bug.

I guess I was lucky.

Oh and I’m my first job after uni playing Nytol chicken 😳. It was the most boring job in the world and the management didn’t really know what they had to do with the team I was in. So we pretty much had to just sit in silence from 9-5 each day. It was before there was stuff to mess around with on the internet to pass the time so we used to make up games to kill the time. One day we all had a look through our bags to see if we could find anything in there that was interesting. One guy had a box of Nytol so 3 of us started taking them one by one. I think I took about 6! The new drove the hour home across the moors in darkness a couple of hours later. I felt bloody awful.

I once played a strange game of who will pass out first sniffing poppers! Literally sniffing little bottles for ages with this bloke. Idiot

I tried poppers and then read what they do to your brain. Lesson quickly learned, although a bit late.

I am now wondering what they do to your brain but reluctant to look though I can guess that they probably kill shitloads of brain cells.

They are amyl and alkyl nitrates and the popper name is quite accurate. That headache you got? Say bye bye brain cells.

Oh god yes, I remember doing poppers lots too. That headache was awful.

As the first one home, I would often cook the evening meal for my family coming home, aged 10.

DD will be 10 in April. She would definitely burn the house down or blow it up doing that. 😂